Re: [Discuss] SD Cards, cheap and here for a while?

[Jack Coats]

I saw something a few months ago.  SD cards are not recommended for
long term storage,
and the current best manufacturers are SanDisk and Samsung, according
to the article.

There is no great long term archives.  Some '1000 year archival DVDs'
like Verbatim brands
seem to be some of the best, currently, but even those have a l3imited
lifetime for 'near absolute'
recoverability of data.  Tapes are great, but even those need
maintenance annually (wind/rewind just
to keep the media from 'sticking'), higher density drives and storage
methods that use smaller bits
can have bit-rot from stray cosmic rays or mechanical dings.  But
keeping all data online is
waiting for a hacker and power surge to take it out.

Yea, I spent way to much of my life worrying about such things for
companies. ... For most
mere mortals, the 3-2-1 of backups backup is pretty good.

Working for a company, they didn't believe me when I kept harping on
offsite backups should
at least be in another town.  Then flood waters took out the 'offsite
storage' location that was
'cheap' that was only 5 miles from the main data center.  After that,
we shipped monthly's to
another town and offsites went to a commercial vendor (IronMountain at
the time).

Sorry, I get caught up in war stories. ... I hope this helps someone. ... Jack
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Re: [Discuss] Whence distributed operating systems?

[Jack Coats]

In many ways, we do have a single system signon, with a 'single system
image' for well developed systems today.

This is not true for everything, but within many companies web presence,
the user (who we are in in business to support, right?) sees a 'single
system image', whether it is implemented on a single system or a complex
system or a 'cloud' (basically an obscured set of cooperating systems).

Most often we just ask for users to sign in once to access all aspects of
their 'user experience', even if the systems do re-authorization behind the
curtains.

For supporting the systems that provide this illusion to the users, we are
still lacking on making that as smooth as it needs to be eventually.

The cost of computing has kept going down for years.  And to make it
economical to provide seamless experience for users, the cost of networking
and computing in general has had to go way down. ... Even on a single
platform, let's talk word processing.  Today Word or equivalent is the
standard.  It generates a very flexible document.  Not just text anymore,
but colors, multiple fonts, graphics, and much more, let alone the
programability built into the macro type functions.

This is all great, but it comes at a price.  Just look at the difference in
size between a text only ASCII file that says "The little brown fox jumps
over the lazy dog." and the word processing document that does that.

The price?  Complexity in the programming, the size of files to store and
shuffle from place to place (and associated network traffic).  Bigger
systems (not individual but think all the aspects it takes to run things)
take more administration, maintenance, power, people effort as developers,
admins, system maintainers, let alone the overhead that comes with that and
keeping things semi-organized.

Is all this worth it?  Today the market has said it is.

This whole computing thing is to provide users with a way for them to be
more profitable in their lives.  Whether it is to lower stress, communicate
easier, process information in a way than makes sense to them (not
necessarily us), at a price that the end customer can tolerate and many of
us 'middlemen' can still make a living (some better than others).

Back toward the original subject, the reason that Single System Image was a
big deal was to simplify life for customers and to reduce overhead for the
customers.  Single Sign On was part of the whole thing too.

So back to the question: Is SSI still a thing?  Yes. ... Just re-branded,
revamped, re-released under a label saying it is all 'New and Improved'.


On Thu, Apr 21, 2016 at 7:11 AM, Dan Ritter  wrote:

> On Thu, Apr 21, 2016 at 04:50:35AM +, Mike Small wrote:
> >
> > After the meeting I was discussing this issue with a friend. It's not an
> > original criticism I didn't suppose, so I found someone with better
> > words to sum up my reaction:
> >
> > "Sadly it seems that we now need to either wait for Linux or Windows to
> > catch up with the 1980s state of the art in distributed systems (think
> > Locus or AFS). What went wrong? Products like DataSynapse’s FabricServer
> > look like an interesting attempt to address the problem, at least for
> > the Java world, but it feels to me that mainstream operating systems
> > designers seem to have lost the plot somewhere along the way."
> >
> >
> http://discovery.bmc.com/community/blog-post/whatever-happened-to-distributed-operating-systems3/
> >
> > Is single system image still a thing?
>
> No, because you need to deal with parallelism issues on a single server.
> Pocket computers now have four simultaneously working cores. It got really
> hard for CPUs to get faster -- how long has the state of the art hovered
> around 4GHz -- so the process improvements lead to more cores, instead.
>
> 80 cores used to be called a cluster, now it's a moderately expensive
> 1U box. If your problems are smaller than that, you use virtualization
> to gain efficient utilization. If your problems are bigger than that,
> you need to coordinate lots of machines anyway, which will be managed
> in a manner nearly identical to a swarm of virtual machines even if they
> are containers or real metal.
>
> The easiest answer is to take your problem, split it into a lot of
> cases, and send the cases out to all the [threads, cores, containers,
> VMs, boxes] to be worked on. Hopefully they don't need to interact much
> during the case work, and hopefully they don't need to coordinate much
> afterwards. Most of the work involves figuring out what to do for those
> interactions and coordinations.
>
> -dsr-
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>



-- 
><> ... Jack

The Four Boxes of Liberty - "There are four boxes to be used in the defense
of liberty: soap, ballot, jury and ammo. Please use in that order."
"Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart"... Colossians 3:23
"Anyone who has never made a

Re: [Discuss] Fw: new message

[Jack Coats]

My apologies to everyone. ... Someone has been spamming from my email
address.  I have been trying to find it but I think they are spoofing my
email at this point.  All my passwords have been changed.

Again, appologies for inconvenience. ... Jack

On Sun, Nov 29, 2015 at 11:21 AM, Chris P. OConnell 
wrote:

> hey guys who run BLU, can you do anything about this?
>
> On Mon, Nov 30, 2015 at 12:40 AM,  wrote:
>
>> Hey!
>>
>>
-- 
><> ... Jack

The Four Boxes of Liberty - "There are four boxes to be used in the defense
of liberty: soap, ballot, jury and ammo. Please use in that order."
"Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart"... Colossians 3:23
"Anyone who has never made a mistake, has never tried anything new." -
Albert Einstein
"You don't manage people; you manage things. You lead people." - Admiral
Grace Hopper, USN
"Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn." -
Ben Franklin
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Re: [Discuss] Dropping obsolete commands (Linux Pocket Guide)

[Jack Coats]

The way things are done has changed over time.  sudo  wasn't around when
chfn was developed and became part of the standard command set.

It isn't bad, just different than newer individuals typically learn.

Overall, UNIX was a place to tring together lots of small programs into
scripts.  Most folk don't do that anymore, they tend to write monolithic
monsterpieces that depend of various libraries.

Neither is wrong, both are OK.  The winds of time and user perspective
dictate what is 'most efficient' for any given scenario.

Just my $0.02 quatloos.

On Wed, Nov 18, 2015 at 10:37 AM, Chuck Anderson  wrote:

> On Wed, Nov 18, 2015 at 09:01:19AM -0500, Bill Ricker wrote:
> > On Wed, Nov 18, 2015 at 6:46 AM, Dan Ritter 
> wrote:
> >
> > > > Other than chfn, how do people usually change their Full Name in
> > > > /etc/passwd?
> > >
> > > usermod comes along with useradd and userdel. Being able to
> > > supply everything on the command line (including a password
> > > hash) is a great improvement over interactive commands.
> >
> >
> > ​there's always 'sudo vipw'​
>
> Those two options don't work for a regular user to change their own
> Full Name.
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-- 
><> ... Jack

The Four Boxes of Liberty - "There are four boxes to be used in the defense
of liberty: soap, ballot, jury and ammo. Please use in that order."
"Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart"... Colossians 3:23
"Anyone who has never made a mistake, has never tried anything new." -
Albert Einstein
"You don't manage people; you manage things. You lead people." - Admiral
Grace Hopper, USN
"Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn." -
Ben Franklin
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Re: [Discuss] Dropping obsolete commands (Linux Pocket Guide)

[Jack Coats]

Yes.  Sometimes people get married, divorced, or whatever.  The whatever is
probably more important option there .

On Tue, Nov 17, 2015 at 8:08 PM, Chuck Anderson  wrote:

> On Tue, Nov 17, 2015 at 07:15:26PM -0500, Daniel Barrett wrote:
> > As for the rest of the commands I asked about, I plan to drop finger
> > and chfn
>
> Other than chfn, how do people usually change their Full Name in
> /etc/passwd?
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>



-- 
><> ... Jack

The Four Boxes of Liberty - "There are four boxes to be used in the defense
of liberty: soap, ballot, jury and ammo. Please use in that order."
"Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart"... Colossians 3:23
"Anyone who has never made a mistake, has never tried anything new." -
Albert Einstein
"You don't manage people; you manage things. You lead people." - Admiral
Grace Hopper, USN
"Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn." -
Ben Franklin
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Re: [Discuss] Linux on laptops

[Jack Coats]

I ran used dell Latitude laptop for years with ubuntu.  It worked
flawlessly from initial install on (think Ubuntu 6.whatever).  I finally
got tired of the Ubuntu bloat and moved to an Ubuntu derivative, Mint that
is a little lighter.

After ouliving a couple of disk drives and a 'full blown' memory upgrade,
that lasted a long time, the mobo finally gave out and I moved to a used
Thinkpad T40 if I remember right.  Went through a couple more disk drives
and memory upgrade on it too.  After several years (3 or so) the GPU
finally gave out.

So I splurged and got a new Thinkpad.  A T540p, loaded Mint on it multiboot
with the win 8.1 that was pre-installed.  My only issue with it is the
trackpad is much more kludgey than the previous Thinkpad.  But it is
serving me well.  Finally ordered memory upgrade (from 8 to 16G).  I also
have a desktop expansion to have a place to leave mouse and external drive
plugged in.  The T540p was new ordered from the Lenovo web site, so no real
discounts, but it is my first new factory computer since 1984.  Still, Mint
is my main OS, and it works well.  I do go into Windows enough to keep it
backed up and updated, also Hulu doesn't work for me under Mint.  I use
CRASHPLAN to back up both to the same external drive.

The Lenovo T540p was in the $700 range.  I chose the Thinkpad again because
of its being rugged enough for me to haul around without fear of breaking
it to easily.  But then again I don't have experience with other models

-- 
><> ... Jack

The Four Boxes of Liberty - "There are four boxes to be used in the defense
of liberty: soap, ballot, jury and ammo. Please use in that order."
"Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart"... Colossians 3:23
"Anyone who has never made a mistake, has never tried anything new." -
Albert Einstein
"You don't manage people; you manage things. You lead people." - Admiral
Grace Hopper, USN
"Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn." -
Ben Franklin
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Re: [Discuss] Profiting from GPL software

[Jack Coats]

Or selling 'configuration and installation services' related to the
GPL software (even if it is just putting it on a USB stick).

On Mon, Nov 9, 2015 at 10:26 PM, Rich Pieri  wrote:
> On 11/9/2015 10:46 PM, Robert Krawitz wrote:
>>
>> No, but they buy commodity home routers, so loading them with GPL
>> software is another way to "sell" the software.
>
>
> It's selling a product that has GPL software in it.
>
> --
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-- 
><> ... Jack

The Four Boxes of Liberty - "There are four boxes to be used in the
defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury and ammo. Please use in that
order."
"Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart"... Colossians 3:23
"Anyone who has never made a mistake, has never tried anything new." -
Albert Einstein
"You don't manage people; you manage things. You lead people." -
Admiral Grace Hopper, USN
"Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I
learn." - Ben Franklin
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Re: [Discuss] Fwd: Hey FCC, Don't Lock Down Our Wi-Fi Routers | WIRED

[Jack Coats]

I've heard that for years from 'consultants' and small software companies.

The idea to make money is to sell equipment and services, not the software.
The marketing problem I have seen is people 'want' to buy software,
and bosses/lawyers
have trouble with 'software anyone could download'.  Where the
'special sauce' is
the configuration and making all the glue parts make it run easily.  But many
customers purchasing authorities see it that way so they aren't willing to pay
what it really takes.

I worked for a small company that 'sold' white box VOIP phone systems.
I heard one
customer say they are not going to pay for the 'free software'.  The
boss tried to help
him understand.  Under 2 weeks later we pulled out the phones and server with a
customer that said we were 'ripping him off' with selling free software.

Some sales are not meant to be.

Most reasonable clients are wanting reliable, maintainable equipment
and service to
help them solve their problem.  Many that only want a 'quality'
solution won't talk
to small vendors to start with.

Selling service to help them with a solution for their problem for a
reasonable price
is all we cared to do.

Selling solutions using OSS software is not easy.  It can be done but
it seems to take extra effort.


On Mon, Nov 9, 2015 at 10:30 AM, Rich Pieri  wrote:
> On 11/9/2015 8:40 AM, Thompson, David wrote:
>>>
>>> Lots of reasons that I've previously enumerated but here's another one:
>>> you
>>> can't turn a profit trying to sell GPL software.
>>
>>
>> The level of dishonest anti-GPL rhetoric in this thread is very
>> surprising.
>
>
> I'll bite: what's dishonest about my statement?
>
> --
> Rich P.
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-- 
><> ... Jack

The Four Boxes of Liberty - "There are four boxes to be used in the
defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury and ammo. Please use in that
order."
"Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart"... Colossians 3:23
"Anyone who has never made a mistake, has never tried anything new." -
Albert Einstein
"You don't manage people; you manage things. You lead people." -
Admiral Grace Hopper, USN
"Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I
learn." - Ben Franklin
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Re: [Discuss] Fwd: Hey FCC, Don't Lock Down Our Wi-Fi Routers | WIRED

[Jack Coats]

My point is, for the geek, having upgradable hardware is a doable
personal project, so this FCC potential ruling is not a death knell.

For the general consumer, well they seldom if ever upgrade microcode
and have displayed a propensity to purchase a new shiny trinket rather
than try to upgrade.

Not everyone, but most consumers, or they wouldn't keep selling more
routers than we have people in the country!

I figure that the feds will be disabling any updates to phones
eventually once they realize that it doesn't take a genius to
update/change/modify them too.


On Sun, Nov 8, 2015 at 11:07 AM, Rich Pieri  wrote:
> On 11/8/2015 11:40 AM, Michael Tiernan wrote:
>>
>> I've always wondered why no one produces a cheaper unit without
>> functioning firmware, just a basic web interface (or better USB) that
>> says "Load your own and have at it."
>
>
> Economy of scale. You can't have cheaper without the general consumer market
> buying into it. The general consumer market won't buy hobbyist DIY kit.
>
> --
> Rich P.
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-- 
><> ... Jack

The Four Boxes of Liberty - "There are four boxes to be used in the
defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury and ammo. Please use in that
order."
"Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart"... Colossians 3:23
"Anyone who has never made a mistake, has never tried anything new." -
Albert Einstein
"You don't manage people; you manage things. You lead people." -
Admiral Grace Hopper, USN
"Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I
learn." - Ben Franklin
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Re: [Discuss] Fwd: Hey FCC, Don't Lock Down Our Wi-Fi Routers | WIRED

[Jack Coats]

I don't like the feds doing what feds gointa do either.  But we need
to remember where these routers came from.  Small computes running a
'nix derivative, some firewall software on it.  That is what Cisco
sold for years to commercial clients.  Linksys et all just found some
smaller computers to run it on.

If they can do it, we can do it too.  Garage development of small
computer with both a wired and a wireless NIC or two is basically that
it is.  Yes, in a garage it is hard to get the cost down, cool
packaging, but we can make the functions for a 'distributed computer
network'.

Doing the roll your own may not be as convenient as plunking down $$
at Newegg or Amazon, but it is doable without ninja skills.

IMHO, if the feds do what they want, we will find instructables to do
this for mere mortals available within a week or two.

Yes, follow the high road, and fight the bureaucracy with their own
tools, but remember, WE can overcome using tools we know how to use.

Cisco, HP, Compaq, and so many more came from garage and basement
shops.  Greatest ideas normally come from little shops and labs, and
few require huge development teams.

Don't let the fed's get you down.  We can - and will - overcome!


On Sun, Nov 8, 2015 at 9:49 AM, Rich Pieri  wrote:
> On 11/8/2015 2:57 AM, Shirley Márquez Dúlcey wrote:
>>
>> I think your interpretation of the TiVo situation is philosophically
>> incorrect, even though there are no factual errors.
>
>
> Back in 2005, Apple convinced LLVM's authors to relicense under the GPL and
> worked up the patch to merge LLVM into GCC. At the last minute the GCC folks
> told Apple and LLVM to go away. GCC didn't want it. GCC didn't like the
> modular design and there was probably a lot of NIH syndrome.
>
> https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTU4MzE
>
> Now RMS bemoans how LLVM isn't free as in FSF software.
>
> https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=RMS-Emacs-Gud-LLVM
>
> That's gratitude for you.
>
> RMS and GNU have a history of poor treatment of GNU contributors and
> would-be contributors. This has alienated users and would-be users of free
> as in FSF software. It's not a misinterpretation. It's a fact.
>
>
>> Now that cloud computing and software as a service are being a normal
>> thing rather than an exception, the interesting question going forward
>> is whether we will see more adoption of the GNU Affero license. For
>
>
> I figure not much. The Affero v3 license is even more hostile towards
> commercial products than the GPLv3.
>
>
> --
> Rich P.
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-- 
><> ... Jack

The Four Boxes of Liberty - "There are four boxes to be used in the
defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury and ammo. Please use in that
order."
"Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart"... Colossians 3:23
"Anyone who has never made a mistake, has never tried anything new." -
Albert Einstein
"You don't manage people; you manage things. You lead people." -
Admiral Grace Hopper, USN
"Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I
learn." - Ben Franklin
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Re: [Discuss] weird disk issues

[Jack Coats]

I have a 'home server' and it is in a hall closet without a door.  It still
gets dusty and air circulation is poor.
I seem to have a thermal problem on occasion that keeps it from recognizing
an internal data drive
(not the boot drive) when it comes up.

I to have a UPS, but have found using and monitoring a good UPS is better
than some 'cheap' UPSes out there.
I use APC here at home that use 'real sign wave' output.  Some cheaper ones
do square wave or few steps in their
sign wave.  Yes, I used refurbished UPSes, with new batteries.

My systems tend to need a new power supply, even if on UPSes every 5 years,
3 if knock off supplies.
I have dissected the supplies a few times and it is pretty much  always a
electrolytic capacitor that fails.
Sometimes it will take a winding in a transformer with it.

The only UPS failures I have had were after a local lightening strike.
Opening up the UPS, it's power section
and half of the MOVs were apparently toast.  All equipment on each of my 5
UPSes passed without a glitch,
but 2 of the UPSes died in that strike.  The UPS guy hated me getting new
UPSes and batteries delivered
after that, but all has worked well. - Oh yes, I lost about $1000 on
non-UPS electronics plus the UPSes during
that incident.

Not sure if anything there will help.

On Thu, Oct 15, 2015 at 11:53 AM, Mike Small  wrote:

> On Thu, Oct 15, 2015 at 12:34:09PM -0400, Stephen Adler wrote:
> > > What kernel version do you have?
> > >
> >
> > It's the latest RHEL 7
> >
> > [root@basement00 ~]# uname -a
> > Linux basement00.stephenadler.local 3.10.0-229.14.1.el7.x86_64 #1 SMP
> > Tue Aug 25 11:21:22 EDT 2015 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
>
> So I guess it's not this then:
> https://github.com/manjaro/packages-core/issues/11
>
> --
> Mike Small
> sma...@sdf.org   SDF Public Access UNIX System - http://sdf.org
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>



-- 
><> ... Jack

The Four Boxes of Liberty - "There are four boxes to be used in the defense
of liberty: soap, ballot, jury and ammo. Please use in that order."
"Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart"... Colossians 3:23
"Anyone who has never made a mistake, has never tried anything new." -
Albert Einstein
"You don't manage people; you manage things. You lead people." - Admiral
Grace Hopper, USN
"Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn." -
Ben Franklin
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Re: [Discuss] Fwd: Hey FCC, Don't Lock Down Our Wi-Fi Routers | WIRED

[Jack Coats]

Yes, very disturbing.  But I totally expect there to be some open source
software defined radio setup built to allow using it with DD-WRT or
similar, so that true experimenters won't be blocked totally by bureaucrats.

Industry seems to be doing their best to block users that want/need more
than their product-de-jour or ones that are truely security focused.  To
help them keep up their revenue, they are enlisting the regulatory agencies
to help them and not the public that the regulators are there to serve and
look out for. ... grump ...


On Sat, Sep 26, 2015 at 12:12 AM, John Abreau  wrote:

> Well, this is disturbing.
>
>
> -- Forwarded message --
> From: Woods, Charles R 
> Date: Fri, Sep 25, 2015 at 9:27 PM
> Subject: Hey FCC, Don't Lock Down Our Wi-Fi Routers | WIRED
> To: John Abreau 
>
>
> Hey John!
>  Here's what I was talking about with new Wi-Fi regulations:
>
> http://www.wired.com/2015/09/hey-fcc-dont-lock-wi-fi-routers/
>
>
>
>
> Sent from my Verizon Wireless 4G LTE smartphone
>
>
> This e-mail and any attached files may contain CB&I (or its affiliates)
> confidential and privileged information. This information is protected by
> law and/or agreements between CB&I (or its affiliates) and either you, your
> employer or any contract provider with which you or your employer are
> associated. If you are not an intended recipient, please contact the sender
> by reply e-mail and delete all copies of this e-mail; further, you are
> notified that disclosing, copying, distributing or taking any action in
> reliance on the contents of this information is strictly prohibited.
>
>
>
>
> --
> John Abreau / Executive Director, Boston Linux & Unix
> Email: abre...@gmail.com / WWW http://www.abreau.net / PGP-Key-ID
> 0x920063C6
> PGP-Key-Fingerprint A5AD 6BE1 FEFE 8E4F 5C23  C2D0 E885 E17C 9200 63C6
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-- 
><> ... Jack

The Four Boxes of Liberty - "There are four boxes to be used in the defense
of liberty: soap, ballot, jury and ammo. Please use in that order."
"Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart"... Colossians 3:23
"Anyone who has never made a mistake, has never tried anything new." -
Albert Einstein
"You don't manage people; you manage things. You lead people." - Admiral
Grace Hopper, USN
"Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn." -
Ben Franklin
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Re: [Discuss] Cloud-backup solutions for Linux?

[Jack Coats]

Syncing is a form of backup IMHO.  But I don't like that it is so easy to
access.  That makes it to easy for ME to fubar my own data. (Dropbox
keeping an old version or so for a while has saved me in the past, but it
is secondary to its normal function.)

I do use syncing.  I use a separate backup, and even backup my syncing
directory (i.e. dropbox is in my backup path, but the backup doesn't go to
dropbox).

My normal preaching to local user groups is 3-2-1 backups.  If you need the
story, let me know offline.

I backup using crashplan to a local drive, AND to the 'cloud', AND to a
second local machine to give me the 3-2-1 mix (some would call it 4-2-1 but
I digress)

On Thu, Sep 24, 2015 at 9:36 AM, Matt Shields  wrote:

> Who says sync/sharing is not a backup?  Is the goal a backup not to have
> two or more copies of your data in different locations?  If the datacenter
> happens to fail, your other copy would be the local one, correct?
> Swapping backup drives/tapes isn't without it's own problems.  What happens
> if the bank building burns down?  Or the drive/tape becomes corrupt?
> Computer dies before your bi-monthly/quarterly drive swap?
>
> For me, using a live sync solution provides a better backup solution than
> dealing with SneakerNet. My backups are up to the minute and automatic and
> redundant (computer -> ownCloud -> S3 in other region). I personally have
> no time for dealing with manually backing up our personal computers and
> swapping a drive at my banks vault.  My solution works for me because it
> solves my problem of having offsite backups (and recovery) and keeps it
> simple.  The trick is to find what works for you because if it's burdensome
> and complicated you're not going to do it or you're going to forget about
> it.  With all these idea/solutions we're playing the odds.  What are the
> odds that my cloud instance, S3 and my local computer all die at the same
> time?  What are the chances that my computer dies the day before I get a
> backup to disk and take it to the bank?  Don't write off sync
> technologies/services as not acceptable.  Evaluate what your needs are and
> what is acceptable for data loss is and make a choice based on that.  For
> some the cost of hosting their own sync server will not be worth it and a
> backup drive taken to the bank is "good enough".
>
>
> Matt
>
> On Thu, Sep 24, 2015 at 10:06 AM, Rich Pieri 
> wrote:
>
> > On 9/24/2015 6:36 AM, Matt Shields wrote:
> >
> >> Check out ownCloud.  It let's you run your own cloud based backup
> >> service.
> >>
> >
> > ownCloud is sync/sharing, not backup.
> >
> > On 9/24/2015 7:02 AM, Edward Ned Harvey (blu) wrote:
> > > Oh god, no. If you're thinking about ownCloud, try Synctuary instead.
> >
> > So are Synctuary, SyncThing, SparkleShare, etc.
> >
> > Bill Cattey's answer is the correct one.
> >
> > What happens when your sync storage disk fails? You lose everything. So
> > you get a RAID setup. What happens when the RAID controller goes stupid
> and
> > scribbles garbage all over the disk? You lose everything. So you go to a
> > big, safe cloud provider. What happens when the data center's power grids
> > get hit by lightning four times in rapid succession? Maybe you lose
> > everything.
> >
> > If it isn't on media that can be physically detached and stored securely
> > (fire box, safe deposit box, etc.) then it isn't a backup. At best it is
> > the first step in creating backups; at worst it is permanent data loss
> > begging to happen.
> >
> > --
> > Rich P.
> >
> > ___
> > Discuss mailing list
> > Discuss@blu.org
> > http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
> >
> ___
> Discuss mailing list
> Discuss@blu.org
> http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
>



-- 
><> ... Jack

The Four Boxes of Liberty - "There are four boxes to be used in the defense
of liberty: soap, ballot, jury and ammo. Please use in that order."
"Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart"... Colossians 3:23
"Anyone who has never made a mistake, has never tried anything new." -
Albert Einstein
"You don't manage people; you manage things. You lead people." - Admiral
Grace Hopper, USN
"Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn." -
Ben Franklin
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Re: [Discuss] Cloud-backup solutions for Linux?

[Jack Coats]

On occasion, I have had to delete a crashplan client, and on windows
machines reboot, before installing it again, and re-claiming the same
crashplan machine name.

Before crashplan, I used a script with tar to backup to Amazon using
'normal' backup, full, followed by various versions of reduced versions,
but get a full backup monthly. ... based on some of Curtis Prestons scripts
from backupcentral.com (free scripts) but I did modify it to use amazon.
 (No link to Curtis or backupcentral.com other than I used to work with him
at a consulting company).


http://computers.tutsplus.com/tutorials/how-to-backup-all-your-files-to-amazon-s3--cms-21386

http://s3tools.org/s3cmd

and a few other similar sites are easily found using google.
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Re: [Discuss] NAS: lots of bays vs. lots of boxes

[Jack Coats]

Ok, a rookie question (but real) here.  How do you know if your drive is
near 'end of life'?  Calendar?  SMART statistics?  Hours of runtime?

I have been known to wait till the 'wheels fall off', but that always
causes minor panics and excess effort.

Suggestions that are easy to follow and quantifiable?
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Re: [Discuss] NAS: encryption

[Jack Coats]

Rich, your post reminded me of this sticker I saw:
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Re: [Discuss] stumped: machine won't boot

[Jack Coats]

Suggestion: Boot from other media (USB/CD etc) an OS that will allow you to
run SMART utilities on the drive.

I have a drive that is acting as you describe, it was 'out of reparable
sectors' or something like that.  It basically means the drive is out of
places to stash good data after finding bad sectors.  The drive was old and
had to be replaced even though the data all appeared good.  Only by
examining the SMART data for the drive did I come to that conclusion.

Yes, I tried low level formats, but never found a way to reset the SMART
data even after a low level format.

Probably time for me to get out of this biz if the equipment can outfox me.
... Already retired, so I guess the equipment won this round.

On Fri, Jun 26, 2015 at 9:54 AM, Richard Pieri 
wrote:

> Try using the SystemRescueCD.
> http://www.sysresccd.org/SystemRescueCd_Homepage
>
> It's my go-to when I need to fix a box that won't boot.
>
> --
> Rich P.
>
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>



-- 
><> ... Jack

The Four Boxes of Liberty - "There are four boxes to be used in the defense
of liberty: soap, ballot, jury and ammo. Please use in that order."
"Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart"... Colossians 3:23
"Anyone who has never made a mistake, has never tried anything new." -
Albert Einstein
"You don't manage people; you manage things. You lead people." - Admiral
Grace Hopper, USN
"Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn." -
Ben Franklin
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Re: [Discuss] large log file transfer

[Jack Coats]

Why split it?  It depends on how big big is.  Even compressed by gzip -9 if
the file is 'too large', splitting it in half (or more parts) to get the
size of each compressed portion below the threshold of data transfer 'pain'
can make it possible to transfer large files over 'limited' links or with
'limited size media'.  I first ran into split back when using 128K floppy
diskettes to move files.  The concept is still the same, just the
definition of 'large' has changed.

On Tue, Jun 23, 2015 at 10:17 AM, Mike Small  wrote:

> John Malloy  writes:
>
> > I have a log file (325MB)  that I need to transfer from a restricted
> > network, that I cannot plug a USB into.
> >
> > Is there an easy way to "split up" the log file into smaller chunks and
> Zip
> > it to get it over the net?
>
> So Jerry and Jack have pointed you to split, but why do you want to
> split it into chunks?
>
> I must admit I've not dealt with any networks lately that I couldn't
> reliably download a 300 MB file on, but is it not still possible to
> resume interrupted transfers?  Are you using vanilla ftp, http or scp?
>
> If you're using scp, I'd be inclined not to zip it but to use ssh's
> compression so when it finally does arrive I wouldn't have to unzip and
> then again find something else to do while that happens. But I guess scp
> doesn't support resume (hmmm, maybe ssh dd and adjust the offset based
> on the file size after the failure? -- perhaps that's more trouble than
> splitting).
>
> By "restricted network" do you mean that rsync is not an option?
>
> --
> Mike Small
> sma...@panix.com
> ___
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> Discuss@blu.org
> http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
>



-- 
><> ... Jack

The Four Boxes of Liberty - "There are four boxes to be used in the defense
of liberty: soap, ballot, jury and ammo. Please use in that order."
"Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart"... Colossians 3:23
"Anyone who has never made a mistake, has never tried anything new." -
Albert Einstein
"You don't manage people; you manage things. You lead people." - Admiral
Grace Hopper, USN
"Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn." -
Ben Franklin
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Re: [Discuss] large log file transfer

[Jack Coats]

Try the 'split' command (man is your friend), then zip (gzip -c9 filename
or whatever).
Split allows splitting into 'bite size chunks', while gzip will do the
compression.

I hope this helps.

On Tue, Jun 23, 2015 at 7:44 AM, John Malloy  wrote:

> I have a log file (325MB)  that I need to transfer from a restricted
> network, that I cannot plug a USB into.
>
> Is there an easy way to "split up" the log file into smaller chunks and Zip
> it to get it over the net?
>
> Thanks!
>
>
> John Malloy
> jomal...@gmail.com
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> http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
>



-- 
><> ... Jack

The Four Boxes of Liberty - "There are four boxes to be used in the defense
of liberty: soap, ballot, jury and ammo. Please use in that order."
"Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart"... Colossians 3:23
"Anyone who has never made a mistake, has never tried anything new." -
Albert Einstein
"You don't manage people; you manage things. You lead people." - Admiral
Grace Hopper, USN
"Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn." -
Ben Franklin
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Re: [Discuss] A laptop for Linux

[Jack Coats]

I have a fairly recent T-series. T540p.  When I have to, the pad works once
I got used to it.   I saw where Lenovo is taking a hint and going back to
'real buttons' on the trackpad, so I would look for that before jumping.  I
just didn't know better and trusted Lenovo to not do something to far off
the beaten path. I use it mainly in a docking station with a regular USB
mouse.  I also do dual-boot using Linux Mint as my main OS but to help
diagnose issues for friends, I keep Winders installed and try to boot and
update it at least monthly.

On Mon, Jun 22, 2015 at 9:45 AM, Bill Ricker  wrote:

> On Mon, Jun 22, 2015 at 10:00 AM, Rohan Joshi  wrote:
> > I am tired with the Lenovo systems and the various issues that keep
> > coming up.  (I have tried on the yoga 2, the flex and the Y series).
>
>
> The enterprise T-series Lenovo had been fine, but I'm hearing the
> latest models that no longer have mice buttons aren't up to the old
> standard. The last of the old enterprise models are still in refurb
> channels.
>
> System76, ZaReason, and Emperor Linux are the three Linux-first
> integrator-retailers. I haven't had the pleasure of buying from them
> yet - i'm cheap enough i like refurb :-) - but when i next need to
> upgrade, there i may have to look them.
>
> --
> Bill Ricker
> bill.n1...@gmail.com
> https://www.linkedin.com/in/n1vux
> ___
> Discuss mailing list
> Discuss@blu.org
> http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
>



-- 
><> ... Jack

The Four Boxes of Liberty - "There are four boxes to be used in the defense
of liberty: soap, ballot, jury and ammo. Please use in that order."
"Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart"... Colossians 3:23
"Anyone who has never made a mistake, has never tried anything new." -
Albert Einstein
"You don't manage people; you manage things. You lead people." - Admiral
Grace Hopper, USN
"Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn." -
Ben Franklin
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Re: [Discuss] swift?

[Jack Coats]

http://www.swift.com/

Yes, this is the SWIFT I know and have used.  Used as the 'FedWire' for
wire transfers by the EU and much of the rest of the world.  They have a
very secure IP based network (not over the internet and severely encrypted)
available for financial, and other private businesses willing to pay their
fees.  That was better tech than the Federal Reserve used from what I could
tell (we also did wire transfers with the Fed at the little regional
bank).  But that was 10+ years ago.

-- 
><> ... Jack

"Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart"... Colossians 3:23
"Anyone who has never made a mistake, has never tried anything new." -
Albert Einstein
"You don't manage people; you manage things. You lead people." - Admiral
Grace Hopper, USN
"Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn." -
Ben Franklin
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Re: [Discuss] My HP Pavilion's HD bit the dust and it is 13 years old, [...]

[Jack Coats]

My used IBM Thinkpad finally gave up (graphics processor died).  Got a
Lenovo Thinkpad T540p, it works well, except the pad.  It accepts clicks
and pointer positioning, but I prefer a USB mouse.  At first the pad was
bad enough I almost sent the new T540p back, but playing with the
sensitivities to make it more useful.  Current version of Mint works well,
but I still prefer the external mouse.  I mainly use a my laptop in a
docking station.  It makes hooking up my mouse, phone dock, external
blue-ray writer, external hard drive, etc easier.

I do dual boot with the pre-installed Win7 on occasion.  It works OK, but I
still prefer Linux.

On Sat, May 30, 2015 at 7:25 PM, Bill Ricker  wrote:

> On Sat, May 30, 2015 at 6:01 PM, Richard Pieri 
> wrote:
>
> > The ThinkPad line has a good track record with Linux. Lenovo's other kit,
> > not so much
>
>
> ​I forget there's non-ThinkPad Lenovo. I've been using ThinkPads since they
> were IBM​
>
>
>
> --
> Bill Ricker
> bill.n1...@gmail.com
> https://www.linkedin.com/in/n1vux
> ___
> Discuss mailing list
> Discuss@blu.org
> http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
>



-- 
><> ... Jack

"Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart"... Colossians 3:23
"Anyone who has never made a mistake, has never tried anything new." -
Albert Einstein
"You don't manage people; you manage things. You lead people." - Admiral
Grace Hopper, USN
"Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn." -
Ben Franklin
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Re: [Discuss] OT: Do CS grads need calculus?

[Jack Coats]

If folks don't want to take classes that don't directly contribute to day 1
job getting, then technical schools fill the bill. .

They teach coding, not science.
They teach mechanics, not engineers.
They teach the how, not the why.
They are good to take, if you are after a job 'now', AND if you want to go
back every few years to get another technical diploma to stay just a step
or two behind, vs learning how to learn and be educated for a lifetime.

I have seen plenty of 'technicians' that are better coders than CompSci
professionals.  But the CS degree holders do bring more to the table than
just coding another gui.

There is a place for all in the work world.

Business employers (except for a comparative few) want PhD's and a couple
of post docs under the belt, who have been out of school 6 months, 22 to 24
years old, with 10 years of experience, and want to work for just under a
reasonable wage. ... That doesn't happen either.
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Re: [Discuss] OT: Do CS grads need calculus?

[Jack Coats]

There is little that a CS degree readies us/me to do in life that is pure
CS based.  Statistics, algebra, physics, philosophy, calculus, chemistry,
biology, queuing theory, management classes, even book keeping more
directly relate to what I have done more than CS.  That is in the oil
patch, meteorology, simulation, banking, management, health care,
manufacturing, writing business plans, etc.  Still math in all its forms
added to my understanding of all these fields (even in getting with my
geophysicist wife - it allowed us to talk together without lots of
superfluous explanation ).  It also has done well for many of my friends in
life.

<>< Jack
On Apr 13, 2015 6:36 PM, "Bill Bogstad"  wrote:

> On Mon, Apr 13, 2015 at 7:44 PM, Derek Martin 
> wrote:
> > On Tue, Apr 07, 2015 at 01:05:43PM -0400, Bill Ricker wrote:
> >>If you're programming Video Games, real Physics is VERY useful, and
> >> knowing enough Calculus to make good approximations too.
> >>If you're in the guts of a graphics rendering engine, Trig (and
> >> approximations) wins big.
> >>If you're straddling EE and CS, you need at least a little Calc to do
> >> the electronics.
> >>But that's not every programmer.
> >
> > At age 22, when most people earn their bachelor degree, do you have
> > any idea what kind of programmer you ultimately will become?  I sure
> > as hell didn't imagine I'd be doing what I'm doing today, and I
> > graduated later than most...
> >
> > The more you know, the more opportunities you will have.  Learning
> > calc exposes your brain to a way of thinking you likely hadn't seen
> > before that.  It expands your mind and makes thinking about certain
> > classes of problems easier/more familiar.  Arguing against it suggests
> > to me narrow-mindedness and/or laziness.  I don't use calc in my
> > day-to-day work but I have used it on a few occasions to simplify
> > certain problems.  That wouldn't have been possible for me had I not
> > studied it.  Admittedly, if I needed to use it now I would fail--it's
> > been way too long.  Or at least, I would need a refresher.
>
> Nobody is saying that calculus isn't a useful subject or that learning new
> things is bad.   They are just suggesting that priorities might be
> different
> for CS majors then for Physics or EE majors where math is concerned.
> I was an EE
> major and Calculus was absolutely necessary for my EE classes.
> I took a bunch of CS classes as well and Calculus wasn't needed for them,
> but graph theory, combinatorics, etc. would have been helpful.
>
> >> We should be changing the core math curriculum for HS & College (for
> >> non-Physics/Engineering majors) to make better citizens: Probability,
> >> Statistics, & Risk Management; Discrete Math.   Those are more useful to
> >> Applied Computer Science students than Calculus too.
> >
> > My high school offered all of those; but there's only so much math you
> > can fit into a high school education.  I ended up having all of those
>
> Exactly and why should Calculus be what everyone takes after their HS
> Algebra sequence?
> Just because that's what was done in the past?  Sixty years ago when
> this was all laid out (post WWII/start of the space race/etc.), it was
> mostly true that the professions/areas of study that needed math past
> Algebra all needed Calculus.  It is not clear that is still true.  Or
> that they don't need some other math even more.
>
> > in college, and I dare say that my "classical" mathematic education in
> > HS served me better, at that particular period of time.  YMMV.  In my
> > experience, most people who weren't bound for some form of sciences in
> > college took basic math in HS... and all too often did poorly at even
> > that.  Prob & stats was a niche course taken mostly by people who
> > *liked math* and were bound for college but not for science.  A rare
> > few indeed.
>
> Which would now be a mistake.  You basically can't do science any more
> without probability and statistics.
> But you can do plenty of science without Calculus.  And you can at
> least get a basic understanding of both without Calculus.
>
> Bill Bogstad
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Re: [Discuss] Request to the community

[Jack Coats]

I had the same math requirement for my CS degree in '74.

Many people have argued that CS doesn't need anything but programming
language classes to code.  They are right.  But it is the rest that gives
the perspective to design, test, innovate, in addition to code.  Reasonable
basic coding doesn't need a well rounded background, but a reasonable coder
isn't all they cold be with the proper tools.

The same argument goes for '3 month coder mill coders' vs college
graduates.  But as I retire, what I think means less to others than it used
to. ... (queue the theme to Lion King - about the circle of life)

... Time to go be grumpy elsewhere ... Jack


On Wed, Apr 8, 2015 at 7:44 PM, Marcia K Wilbur  wrote:

> Well, that's actually a relief to hear - somewhat.
> The computer science program here requires the equivalent to a minor in
> math. In fact, with 2 more courses, one could have a double major. Calc 1,
> 2, 3, Diff Q, and Probability are required.
> Yea, from my work experience with Windows, I don't think someone who makes
> a min larger than a max has much math background...
>
>
> Quoting Richard Pieri :
>
>  On 4/8/2015 7:55 PM, Marcia K Wilbur wrote:
>>
>>> Even if they just changed one thing from 10 to 21, they show it.
>>> Their coding is inferior. I apologize, but it is in my experience.
>>>
>>
>> Your experience isn't a Windows thing. It's a "your company hires as
>> close to minimum wage as it can get away with because code monkeys are a
>> dime a dozen" thing. See previous discussion about the value of hard math
>> as a part of a well-rounded education. It's also a "performance reviews are
>> based on quantity of code check-ins rather than quality of code check-ins"
>> thing.
>>
>> --
>> Rich P.
>> ___
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>>
>
>
>
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>



-- 
><> ... Jack

"Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart"... Colossians 3:23
"Anyone who has never made a mistake, has never tried anything new." -
Albert Einstein
"You don't manage people; you manage things. You lead people." - Admiral
Grace Hopper, USN
"Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn." -
Ben Franklin
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Re: [Discuss] Request to the community

[Jack Coats]

unless you are Ubiquiti evidently ... :-( ... bummer, I like their
equipment. ... ubnt.com

Their equipment is based on open source software, but they don't seem to
think that they have to make available what they use, just some version.

On Wed, Apr 8, 2015 at 6:03 PM, Dan Ritter  wrote:

> On Wed, Apr 08, 2015 at 04:26:14PM -0400, Bruce W wrote:
> > Hello Boston Linux Community!
> >
> > I am looking for three software developers who would be willing to
> discuss
> > their experiences writing and developing open source software products.
> > The conversation will take about 30 minutes and I will be asking about
> the
> > differences between open source and proprietary software development.
> This
> > is not a job interview nor is it a sales/marketing pitch.  I will not ask
> > you to discuss anything that is proprietary or personal.
>
> It's really very simple.
>
> When you work in proprietary software, any time you buy somebody else's
> product/library/application/service, you need to pay them and also follow
> the terms of their proprietary license.
>
> When you work in open source software, you need to follow the
> terms of their open source license.
>
> When you produce whatever product or service, you need to be in compliance
> with the terms of the licenses of all the products you used, proprietary
> and open source, or else you will be sued.
>
> See? Very simple.
>
> -dsr-
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-- 
><> ... Jack

"Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart"... Colossians 3:23
"Anyone who has never made a mistake, has never tried anything new." -
Albert Einstein
"You don't manage people; you manage things. You lead people." - Admiral
Grace Hopper, USN
"Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn." -
Ben Franklin
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Re: [Discuss] OT: Do CS grads need calculus?

[Jack Coats]

I agree most CS majors will never 'need' calculus in their direct work.
Learning Calculus, like philosophy, history, etc, makes for a well rounded
education that CS, and other majors need.  It helps round out the thinking
process.

This is from someone that was a CS major.  I had calculus, and surprisingly
used it a few times directly related to may job, even when others around
didn't understand what I did.  I worked on mainframes to micro's and
embedded systems, from user support, sysadmin, programmer, and systems
maintainer and designer over the years, everywhere from banking, to the oil
patch, to VOIP provider and even helped design, build, and occupy a few of
non-trivial data centers for companies private use and public colo's over
the years.  Yes a few 'never done before' multiple person-year projects
that felt so good when they were over.

Calculus, like sorting algorithms, are just items in the tool box that make
a for better preparation for life, even if they are never used directly.
The though process and philosophy of how to approach problems are
invaluable again and again in personal and corporate life.

I am retired now, and my GPA would have been MUCH higher if calculus wasn't
in there.  Still, I am glad I took, and passed, calculus and differential
equations.

All that said, I hope everyone takes chemistry, physics, math through
calculus, mechanical design/build class (drafting & 'shop'), even kitchen
science (home economics in the old terms), 'business math' (how to keep
books, write checks, balance checking accounts, do interest calculations,
break even and profitability analysis, and even correctly count change
without a register or calculator - the basic functions needed to run a
business or a household).  Music (read music and play something a little
bit, to be able to enjoy and appreciate, not to be a virtuoso), philosophy,
public speaking (even dance), some physical education (that I was horrible
at ever time I took it).  Somewhere along the way I learned to 'estimate'
calculations, and use a slide rule (it helped learn how to estimate).

I wish I was better at foreign languages (Spanish, Chinese, some Italian
and Russian would be good too) would be helpful, and more so learned
earlier in life rather than later.

All these things add to the wonderful tapestry of life.

So yes, learning calculus, at least understanding the principles, is
important in life.
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Re: [Discuss] cell Network time no longer provided

[Jack Coats]

My wife's AT&T iPhone5 changed nicely as we drove from TN to MT and back.
As well as when the time change occurred.  My AT&T MVNO, Consumer Cellular,
changed nicely on the same trip (MotoG it is 3G, not 4G).  My MotoG is
running 4.4.4 of Android, and is a 'unlocked international GSM' version, as
I purchased through Amazon.
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Re: [Discuss] Color Laser question

[Jack Coats]

If you plan on transporting documents in a hot car for several hours in the
summer (I did in Austin TX), the wax CAN melt and stick pages together.
Otherwise the Xerox Phaser is a great printer.

On Wed, Mar 4, 2015 at 2:37 PM, Dan Ritter  wrote:

> On Wed, Mar 04, 2015 at 03:32:04PM -0500, John Abreau wrote:
> > The Xerox Phaser fits comfortably on a desk.
> >
>
> And provides very good output, provided you never, ever tip it.
>
> Works well with Macs and Linux.
>
> -dsr-
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><> ... Jack

"Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart"... Colossians 3:23
"Anyone who has never made a mistake, has never tried anything new." -
Albert Einstein
"You don't manage people; you manage things. You lead people." - Admiral
Grace Hopper, USN
"Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn." -
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Re: [Discuss] Raspberry PI 2

[Jack Coats]

The proprietary nature of the pi is what drove a few guys to develop the
beagle board ( beagleboard.org ).  It is fully open, runs various flavors
of linux that stays on a 4G on-board flash. Go check the site for more
details.  It does run about $45, for the beagle board black.  Spark Fun has
them plus lots of other distributors (their shipping is less, for me anyway)

On Sun, Feb 22, 2015 at 12:10 PM, Tom Metro  wrote:

> Kent Borg wrote:
> > ...this little beast is nearly wide open. (Okay, the Broadcom chip
> > is not publicly documented and binary blobs are needed to use much of
> > it, but still...)
>
> The proprietary nature of the Pi is still its most significant drawback.
>
> A practical example of that limitation is the lack of an Android build
> for the Pi. OpenBSD is also not available[1]. (Though other BSDs are[2].)
>
> There are other Pi clones[3] that are more open. And other boards[4]
> with similar functionality, but Pi is more popular and has a larger
> support community than just about anything.
>
>  -Tom
>
> 1. http://marc.info/?l=openbsd-misc&m=132788027403910&w=2
> 2. http://www.raspberrypi.org/netbsd-is-here/
> 3. http://www.bananapi.org/
> 4. http://beagleboard.org/
>
> --
> Tom Metro
> The Perl Shop, Newton, MA, USA
> "Predictable On-demand Perl Consulting."
> http://www.theperlshop.com/
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><> ... Jack

"Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart"... Colossians 3:23
"Anyone who has never made a mistake, has never tried anything new." -
Albert Einstein
"You don't manage people; you manage things. You lead people." - Admiral
Grace Hopper, USN
"Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn." -
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Re: [Discuss] Are there any no-cost vm's still out there?

[Jack Coats]

Like Xen (xenproject.org)?

On Thu, Feb 12, 2015 at 11:37 AM, Bill Horne  wrote:

> I'm starting a new thread instead of hijacking the os x = poop thread.
>
> Eric Chadbourne wrote:
>
>>  Hi Ed,
>>
>
>   How do you like vmware?  I’ve been using virtualbox for years but I heard
>>  recently there’s only one dev really maintaining it.  Too big a project
>> for that.
>>  I wonder if it will be discontinued soon?
>>
>
>
> My question: does VMWare or Virtualbox still offer no-cost software for
> home/personal use? I'd like to run both Linux and Windows 7 (for all the
> usual reasons), but I don't know if I can do it without paying for a VM.
> TIA.
>
> Bill
>
>
> --
> E. William Horne
> 339-364-8487
>
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><> ... Jack

"Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart"... Colossians 3:23
"Anyone who has never made a mistake, has never tried anything new." -
Albert Einstein
"You don't manage people; you manage things. You lead people." - Admiral
Grace Hopper, USN
"Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn." -
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Re: [Discuss] Home server

[Jack Coats]

On Mon, Jan 26, 2015 at 5:46 PM, Tom Metro  wrote:
> I'd like to find a hardware/software setup that is optimized for backup
> storage, rather than performance and redundancy. For example, a hardware
> solution that allows attaching lots of hard drives, and hot-swapping
> them. Software that treats hard drives as removable cartridges,
> remembering what is stored on what disk. Similar to tape management, but
> modernized for hard drives.

That sounds like a system I started to design and build years ago.  It would
also do HSM.  To bad my 'black hole of data' system never got completed.

Back in CP/M days I had a system that would track contents and meta-data about
files stored on disks, but have never found one since.  As drives get bigger
programs and users just 'expect it to all be there all the time', but
I don't find that to be
necessary most of the time. ... Oh well. ... I too would like a system that you
described above.

-- 
><> ... Jack

"Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart"... Colossians 3:23
"Anyone who has never made a mistake, has never tried anything new." -
Albert Einstein
"You don't manage people; you manage things. You lead people." -
Admiral Grace Hopper, USN
"Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I
learn." - Ben Franklin
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Re: [Discuss] Home server

[Jack Coats]

I did backups using Crashplan without their service. I ran it on a few
machines at home (Win and Ubuntu, they also have a Mac client I have
not used) and backed up to my 'server machine'.  It is not open
source, but free for personal use if not using their backup service.
I even backed up friends machines to other friends machines (still
secured) over the internet (not to mine because of lack of bandwidth).
Can also backup to local drives (great for USB drives).

Eventually I started using the Crashplan service, and it was super
easy once I paid.  But I still backup some things onsite, and other
stuff offsite.

Paid for version uses better encryption.  It is easy to use (gui mainly).

It is pretty good IMHO.  I have been using it for several years.  It
installs and uses its own version of Java (so you don't have to do
java separately) and takes care of updating its own software by
itself.

It does not do bare metal restores.  You reinstall OS, software
including Crashplan, then use it to restore other stuff.  I have had
to do it several times over the years on WIN and LIN system.

I would use BackBlaze probably, but they don't have UNIX/Linux clients
(even though there servers run on it!).

... No ties, just a satisfied customer.
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Re: [Discuss] Higher-end keyboards to try?

[Jack Coats]

http://www.amazon.com/Das-Keyboard-Professional-Quiet-DASK3MKPRORED/dp/B00COQTY7S

Das Keyboard has some louder and softer keyboards (both sound and
force).  Saving my nickles for one :-)

On Wed, Jan 14, 2015 at 5:31 PM, Derek Martin  wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 14, 2015 at 04:44:23PM -0500, Daniel Barrett wrote:
>> I'm interested in getting a better keyboard, like a Cherry MX type,
>> but would like to try out a few first to compare them. Is there a
>> computer store in the Boston area where this is possible? That is,
>> they've got Cherry red, blue, brown, etc., available to try out?
>>
>> I tried a friend's Cherry MX Blue at work at it was quite awesome,
>> though loud.
>
> I suspect you want a brown, which has about the same tension in the key
> switch as a blue but without the click.  The trouble is, so does
> everyone else... they're generally the hardest variant to get.  I
> recently went though this exercise, and went to Microcenter since I
> figured they would have the biggest selection of keyboards in the
> store compared to any other retailer I could think of.  And they do...
> but they did not have a single MX brown keyboard on the shelf, from
> any maker.  Lots of reds, blacks, and blues... no brown.  Not one.
>
> Hopefully that was a temporary problem, and you'll have better luck.
>
> I actually have several mechanical keyboards, and I would recommend
> you look at the Corsair Vengeance K90 with MX Brown switches.  And, if
> you'd be interested in something with a slightly smaller form factor,
> I'd also suggest the CM Storm Quickfire TK, or one of the other boards
> in that line.  Good luck finding one you can try though; and if you do
> want brown switches you can order on Amazon and it generally takes
> about 1-3 months to get, because they're always out of stock.
>
> I would recommend you stay away from Ducky, unless the main reason
> you're considering them is price.  They are cheaper, but... you get
> what you pay for.  They're not terrible--still better than a standard
> membrane keyboard--but the build quality isn't on par with any other
> mechanical keyboard I've tried.
>
> --
> Derek D. Martinhttp://www.pizzashack.org/   GPG Key ID: 0xDFBEAD02
> -=-=-=-=-
> This message is posted from an invalid address.  Replying to it will result in
> undeliverable mail due to spam prevention.  Sorry for the inconvenience.
>
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><> ... Jack

"Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart"... Colossians 3:23
"Anyone who has never made a mistake, has never tried anything new." -
Albert Einstein
"You don't manage people; you manage things. You lead people." -
Admiral Grace Hopper, USN
"Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I
learn." - Ben Franklin
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Re: [Discuss] Finance software for Linux

[Jack Coats]

I designed and wrote a corporate tax package for a Fortune 100 company in
the late '70s.  I worked very closely with a brilliant CPA.  Together we
designed and validated it on 9 months before relational databases were
popular.  It is one of the 2 or 3 big projects in, my career.  It used IBM
mainframe for data collection and a Univac that had an early spreadsheet
system [Foresight] that allowed a team of tax CPAs to do the forms the IRS
required back when.  The CPAs could maintain and run it without computer
folks intervention.  I got Lots of flack from IT peers but it worked for a
long time.

It was the 2nd computer tax submission to the IRS.  Still had to send 5
copies of paper submission but sent a reel of tape too.

Doing a tax system can be done, but it must be maintainable by tax geeks,
not just computer geeks.

Doing this system got me to understand US taxes.  Convoluted.. Yes.
Logical.. Yes[once you dig in deep enough].  Every tax simplification act
has only added complexity.  To truly simplify we must toss out all old
rules and start the system over, not just patch on fixes.

<>< Jack
On Jan 14, 2015 8:25 AM, "Bill Bogstad"  wrote:

> On Wed, Jan 14, 2015 at 2:26 PM, Matthew Gillen  wrote:
> > On 1/14/2015 8:05 AM, Jerry Feldman wrote:
> >> Unfortunately there are only a few companies in the industry who
> >> produce tax software, and they only Windows and Mac compatible, or
> >> you can use the web interfaces. This type of software does not really
> >> lend itself to to Open Source.
> >
> > Why do you say that?  Because it requires a lot of specialized knowledge
> > that typical CS majors don't have?  There are certain projects in the
> > open source world that have to pay attention to regulatory issues (e.g.
> > wireless drivers), and they seem to be able to do so.
> >
> > I suppose the tax code is orders of magnitude more complex and
> > intertwined.  I'd be curious to explore your statement a little more
> > though regarding what kinds of things lend themselves to open source.
>
> It isn't just the complexity.   It is the constant churn.  Sometimes
> because of last minute
> changes from Congress, the IRS doesn't put out final
> instructions/forms until late Fall.
> Admittedly these are usually fairly esoteric issues, but as lots of
> people have something odd about their taxes (uninsured medical
> expenses, loss due to theft/fire, consulting income, etc., etc.); any
> organization putting out tax software has to be prepared to put
> out a new version fairly quickly.   Plus the software is
> geographically restricted.   US Federal tax software might be
> adaptable to state level returns; but probably won't be at
> all useful for UK or Canadian taxes.   This just doesn't strike me as
> a problem domain that
> is very tractable to volunteer efforts.  It is also (to a great
> extent) an all or nothing problem for most users.   If tax software
> only handles 2 of the 3 forms that I need to fill out, it probably
> isn't worth my time to use it.  I'm not aware of any other free
> software (or culture i.e. wikipedia) which operates under these
> conditions.
>
> Bill Bogstad
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Re: [Discuss] Who sells the least expensive SSL certs right now?

[Jack Coats]

I haven't been following this thread, but is cacert.org certs wide
spread enough without users having to add certs (import)?

There should be folks locally that could sign and you could become a
certifier close by.

Just a thought.
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Re: [Discuss] Revisiting VMWare ESX backup options

[Jack Coats]

3-2-1 rule - 3 copies, on 2 different types of media, 1 copy offsite.

That is the minimum.

I have done 2 on disk (local in different disk pools on different
machines), 1 on tape, 1 local, 1 offsite).

For home, I am lazy.  So it 'slightly' violates my own rules.  OK if you
consider 'cloud' a different media:
1 original, 1 or 2 local on disk on different machines that original, 1
remote on 'cloud' (crashplan in my case).

Commercially, I like systems like TSM, that can do a 'disk pool' and manage
local and remote (offsite and local but offline) tapes.  If you have a
private network and can pull off a remote disk pool plus a local disk pool,
and a local tape pool (co-located with the disk pools) and a 'offsite
disaster recovery' tape pool, would let me sleep good at night.

Local disk pools are good for 'awe-shucks' issues where the dba wiped his
only live database or the secretary needs that 'important memo' recovered.
Disaster recovery is recovering to bare metal servers to re-build your data
center at another location due to a fire/chemical/nuke incident in your
'old' datacenter.

Tapes fail.  Rotate tapes, keep track of the tapes and how much they are
used and how long they are kept.  Once they START showing signs of failure,
retire the tapes by making another copy of the data from that tape (if
possible) or another resource.

Old tapes are not just trashed.  Degause them, then shred them, then if
available have them burnt and in all cases, keep the followup paperwork
showing who/when/where it was done.
...

Sorry if I sound preachie.  Made my living doing backups for many years,
and it is still a hot button personally.

On Wed, Oct 29, 2014 at 12:56 PM, Richard Pieri 
wrote:

> On 10/29/2014 11:04 AM, Scott Ehrlich wrote:
>
>> What are your thoughts on product(s) to use for primary to backup and
>> for options for off-site - cloud vs storage facility that gives us
>> space on a system?
>>
>
> Cloud is a non-starter. Megaupload. Code/Spaces. Not worth the risk.
>
> Magtape is the best bang for the buck for archival purposes. Run backups
> from production to disk on the backup server. Replicate these backups to
> tape. Rotate tapes to the storage facility of your choice on a regular
> basis. I've had a good relationship with Iron Mountain's tape vaulting
> service in the past.
>
> --
> Rich P.
>
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><> ... Jack

"Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart"... Colossians 3:23
"Anyone who has never made a mistake, has never tried anything new." -
Albert Einstein
"You don't manage people; you manage things. You lead people." - Admiral
Grace Hopper, USN
"Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn." -
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Re: [Discuss] virus?

[Jack Coats]

If ClamAV was running on the Linux Samba server, would it have caught
the 'bad file' so additional clients would not have been infected?  I
know, it wouldn't help with this virus?

I know you need to put it on and run it religiously including updates
BEFORE the nasties attack.

On Mon, Oct 27, 2014 at 7:34 PM, Bill Ricker  wrote:
> On Mon, Oct 27, 2014 at 6:55 PM, John Abreau  wrote:
>> The samba logs should show you which clients are creating those files, so
>> the users will know they need to disinfect their machines.
>
> Thanks to the auto-run, likely every windows machine using this SAMBA
> share needs to be disinfected by now.
>
> Agree with read-only suggestions to keep it from spreading while you
> exterminate the client infections.
>
> Agree with Clam (or a windows AV) to find out what it is and how to
> remove it from windows primary disk. (It's won't be auto file on
> client c:)
>
>
> --
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> bill.n1...@gmail.com
> https://www.linkedin.com/in/n1vux
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><> ... Jack

"Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart"... Colossians 3:23
"Anyone who has never made a mistake, has never tried anything new." -
Albert Einstein
"You don't manage people; you manage things. You lead people." -
Admiral Grace Hopper, USN
"Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I
learn." - Ben Franklin
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Re: [Discuss] Wire tester (like a tone tester)

[Jack Coats]

I have seen (but not used) some high $$ wire tracing equipment.  From
one end it can tell how far down the line (wire) then end or any break
is on each wire separately.  It couldn't tell you where the other end
is, just how far away the end is as the wire goes.

Wish I could remember the brand or even what it was called for you.
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Re: [Discuss] Home security & automation

[Jack Coats]

For a namebrand, Ubiquiti, ubnt.com has what seems to be good
equipment.  They focus on wireless networking but have security
equipment and appliance interfaces as well.

I have only used their wireless networking equipment but it seems to
be less expensive than most comparable competition of commercial
quality.
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Re: [Discuss] Home security & automation

[Jack Coats]

My wifes employer built a building and had to install two hard lines
even though there were none in the area, just for the alarm system.
(This is in a rural area.  Most folks do not have hard lines here,
can't get dsl or cable either.)

The lines get called daily by the alarm company to ensure they work,
but are used (infrequently) in the building office during the days.
Still works better than the VOIP the company installed (that comes in
via a wifi lan from another building. The other building has a T1
going to it for voice and data use).
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Re: [Discuss] to swap or not swap

[Jack Coats]

I agree, I do LIKE to have swap as a case of both belts and suspenders.

Before you do without swap, answer a few questions...
  1. Is my application well defined and well behaved?
  2. Is this system monitored closely?
  3. Are others capable of updating and maintaining this system?

If 1 or 2 is NO or 3 is YES, then I would add swap.

There are other good rules of thumb, but the first question implicates
the entire answer to me.

Best of luck! ... jack


On Fri, Sep 5, 2014 at 8:30 AM, Stephen Adler  wrote:
> Thanks for the discussion. The question, which seems to have gotten lost
> in the original e-mail was that I have a system with 128Gigs of memory
> and I added 32Gigs of swap just because I've always added some swap to
> any system I configure. (It's like brushing your teeth in the morning,
> you just do it...) But with 128Gigs, which is the largest amount of
> memory I've worked with in any system, it dawned on me that perhaps I
> don't need any swap So, to swap or not to swap was the question.
>
> thanks.
>
> On Fri, 2014-09-05 at 13:22 +, Edward Ned Harvey (blu) wrote:
>> Did you want to have a discussion about swapping?
>>
>> Everyone would agree, you should always avoid swapping unless the memory 
>> requirement of some job exceeds the maximum ram you can put into your 
>> system, or unless it's a one-off job, or you simply don't care if it takes 
>> 100 or 1000 times longer than necessary, and nothing else in the system 
>> matters.
>>
>> I've certainly seen machines start swapping some active processes, and they 
>> become totally unresponsive.  Ssh got swapped out, and can't get enough CPU 
>> share to respond to a login request before the client times out.  You were 
>> lucky that you already had a logged-in terminal sitting there, and you can 
>> still "ls" because that was super hot in the cache and hasn't been expunged 
>> yet, but if you type "top" or "ps" or something that was already ejected 
>> from cache, then your prompt simply hangs indefinitely, as long as the 
>> runaway process is still active in swap memory.
>>
>> Some people would suggest disabling swap entirely, but I don't believe 
>> that's best.  When you allow your system to have a small amount of swap (say 
>> 1G) then the kernel is able to swap idle processes and dead/zombie 
>> processes, making more room for cache & buffers & other stuff, which 
>> improves performance.  By keeping the swap small, you limit the length of 
>> time that you get crushed, in the event a process accidentally runs away and 
>> gobbles memory incessantly.  With 512M or 1G of swap, usually a runaway 
>> process will cause your system to utterly suck for a couple of minutes 
>> before the runaway process dies and things return to normal.
>>
>> This latter argument doesn't carry a lot of value.  If you login to some 
>> long-running existing system you have, and check "top" or "free" you'll see 
>> some amount of swap space consumed, usually non-zero, but usually pretty 
>> small anyway.  Say 10M or maybe 100M.  So the real truth is, there's not 
>> much memory to gain by swapping out the dead/idle processes.  "Yay, I've 
>> effectively increased my 16GB system to 16GB & 10MB."  But I still recommend 
>> adding a small amount of swap to systems.
>>
>>
>
>
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><> ... Jack

"Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart"... Colossians 3:23
"If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the precipitate"
- Henry J. Tillman
"Anyone who has never made a mistake, has never tried anything new." -
Albert Einstein
"You don't manage people; you manage things. You lead people." -
Admiral Grace Hopper, USN
"a nanosecond is the time it takes electrons to propigate 11.8 inches"
- " - http://youtu.be/JEpsKnWZrJ8
"Life is complex: it has a real part and an imaginary part." - Martin Terma
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Re: [Discuss] Wireless devices, 2 Wireless Routers, local network. DD-WRT

[Jack Coats]

Just what I do for my home. ... I like the ubiquiti NanostationM2.  Get a
couple of them (or one as a border router).  Configure one as a 'station'
(as your border router, to get the signal from the campground wifi) and the
other as a standard wifi router (or put another DD-WRT router here).

I also configure them to use a known-good DNS (google or opendns.org)
rather than depending on the supplied DNS.

Some places (camp grounds included) may have captured wifi, that requires
you to click/certify you will abide by their rules before they will let you
out.  There you might have to have a border router you can deal with that
web page.  I don't have a good solution for that. ... I see those pages for
access at hotels and some restaurants.  For those situations having a small
laptop or RaspberryPi with screen as your 'border router' might be useful.


On Wed, Aug 27, 2014 at 7:38 AM,  wrote:

> Here's the scenario:
>
> I like to go camping and often times they provide wireless access, but the
> camp site is often pretty far away from the wireless access point. I have
> a long distance wireless-G router with a high gain antenna. I have a
> second wireless-N router. Both routers are running DD-WRT.
>
>
> I should be able to connect to the camp ground's wireless with the high
> gain antenna using the Wireless-G router with a DHCP assign IP address. I
> should then be able to NAT to my own local subnet and be able to connect
> the Wireless-N to my local subnet and provide access to phones, tablets,
> and laptops.
>
> If these were standard linux boxes, this would be fairly easy, but the
> standard tools don't seem available on DD-WRT's shell.
>
> Has anyone done this? Got a good link? (I have googled, but the examples
> I've found aren't quite right or don't really work.)
>
> ___
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> Discuss@blu.org
> http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
>



-- 
><> ... Jack

"Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart"... Colossians 3:23
"If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the precipitate" -
Henry J. Tillman
"Anyone who has never made a mistake, has never tried anything new." -
Albert Einstein
"You don't manage people; you manage things. You lead people." - Admiral
Grace Hopper, USN
"a nanosecond is the time it takes electrons to propigate 11.8 inches" - "
- http://youtu.be/JEpsKnWZrJ8
"Life is complex: it has a real part and an imaginary part." - Martin Terma
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Re: [Discuss] Looking for WiFi router with certain characteristics

[Jack Coats]

Another option, is to put out some Ubiquiti UniFi AP-Pro Access Points.
 Read more about them on ubnt.com ...

http://www.ebay.com/itm/NEW-Ubiquiti-UAP-PRO-3-UniFi-AP-3-Pack-Bundle-Includes-Mounting-Kit-U-S-Version-/300946015427?pt=US_Wireless_Access_Points&hash=item4611c7c4c3

This is 3 are under $700 in a pack on eBay.  Not cheap, but commercial
quality that can last quite a while.  I know a college locally (in TN) that
uses them in their dorms where they get heavy use (close to abuse ;-) ) but
they stand up well and are remotely managed with Ubiquiti's management
software (free I think).
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Re: [Discuss] raid issues

[Jack Coats]

Tapes are acane, but they still work.  When I did backups for a living, I
liked IBMs TSM.  We kept one copy on local backup disk, one copy or two on
tape onsite, and one or two on offsite backups.

Some folks I worked with did backups for a nuke power plant.  They had one
offsite backup on optical disk, two onsite on optical disk, plus tapes and
regular disks available for fast access.  What you do just depends on your
needs and budget.

The last major company I worked for a few years ago used TSM.  They backed
up locally and did a backup to a remote data center, in addition to sending
tapes 'offsite' regularly.


On Sat, Jun 21, 2014 at 1:33 PM, Bill Bogstad  wrote:

> On Sat, Jun 21, 2014 at 8:01 AM, Jerry Feldman  wrote:
> > "Nothing is a substitute for backups."
> > I just want to reiterate this, hardware fails. If properly managed you
> may be able to identify the failure before any damage is done. And, a
> viable offsite backup mitigates things like a house fire.But, in any case,
> backups are a last resort, but tried and true.
>
> Even "offsite" may not be good enough if you are trying to protect
> against malicious parties.If you are using a cloud based backup
> system which lets you manage your backups over the network, you could
> lose everything if someone manages to
> get access to the management console for the backup system.
> Apparently that is what happened to Code Spaces this
> past week:
>
>
> http://www.csoonline.com/article/2365062/disaster-recovery/code-spaces-forced-to-close-its-doors-after-security-incident.html
>
> Actual media that you can take physically offline may still have merit.
>
> Bill Bogstad
> ___
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>



-- 
><> ... Jack

"Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart"... Colossians 3:23
"If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the precipitate" -
Henry J. Tillman
"Anyone who has never made a mistake, has never tried anything new." -
Albert Einstein
"You don't manage people; you manage things. You lead people." - Admiral
Grace Hopper, USN
"a nanosecond is the time it takes electrons to propigate 11.8 inches" - "
- http://youtu.be/JEpsKnWZrJ8
"Life is complex: it has a real part and an imaginary part." - Martin Terma
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Re: [Discuss] raid issues

[Jack Coats]

Such is the problem with having any single point of failure. ... Current
technologies still have single points of failure at many places, but it can
be overcome.  Basically do a SAN with multiple connections from different
controllers.  ... For most situations, since the round brown & spinning are
the most likely items to fail, that is all we do redundantly.  The
controller failure you found is less likely, but it does happen.  So does
memory issues, motherboard/backplane failures, fan failures causing
overheating, etc, etc.

It would be possible to make multiple storage servers and raid the sets of
data across them (yes, I have actually done 2 controllers with raid on each
then mirrored the data between the controllers/raid).  It still does not
keep from needing good backups.

If your data needs are large enough, you could build such systems or go to
EMC or similar to purchase a solution.  To roll your own, you might look
into the open sourced stuff from Backblaze pods (or OpenStoragePod.org ).
 You still need to do the raid/mirroring/etc on top of the bulk data.  But
then you need to look into using redundant NICs (bonded?) to ensure your
connections don't fail.

Map it out, and see you truely have no single redundancies, and set up
monitoring / checking to ensure it all stays working.  All this goes all
the way to power supplies, UPSes, building transformers, generators, power
feeds, and do the same thing for outside network if that is a requirement
too.

I remember doing this as a part of a task force back in the dinosaur
mainframe days.  It did increase the overall reliability of the center, but
was not fast, cheap, or easy to accomplish.  The good thing is that it can
be done, planning, time, and a reasonable budget are your friends.

For true redundancy, you would also need to look into your business
requirements.  Consider HA clusters, application failover to other servers,
5-9's reliability means 30 seconds of unscheduled downtime per year for all
reasons.  It can be done, but is not easy or cheap.


On Thu, Jun 19, 2014 at 7:50 PM, Stephen Adler 
wrote:

> Guys,
>
> I'm in the process of ordering a new server for my work and I want to get
> one which can handle 16 to 24 drives. But with so much disk capacity I was
> wondering what people to do make the file systems secure. In the past I've
> used either raid 5 or raid 6 arrays. The idea being that if 1 (raid 5) or 2
> (raid 6) drives died, you were OK, all you had to do was replace the drives
> and the rebuild would occur and you were fine.
>
> But then one day I had 4 drives fail at once. It wasn't the drives that
> failed, but the disk controller. I had added a 4 port SATA card to my
> server so that I could add for more drives to my server. So now with
> getting a server with such large drive capacity, I'm wondering of all this
> raid stuff just gives on the warm fuzzies, but in fact you are just as
> vulnerable since you controllers can go and knock out half your drives (or
> whatever).
>
> Any comments on how to deal with say a 16 disks and what's the current
> lore on making large redundant disk arrays?
>
> Thanks in advance!
>
> Cheers. Steve.
>
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>



-- 
><> ... Jack

"Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart"... Colossians 3:23
"If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the precipitate" -
Henry J. Tillman
"Anyone who has never made a mistake, has never tried anything new." -
Albert Einstein
"You don't manage people; you manage things. You lead people." - Admiral
Grace Hopper, USN
"a nanosecond is the time it takes electrons to propigate 11.8 inches" - "
- http://youtu.be/JEpsKnWZrJ8
"Life is complex: it has a real part and an imaginary part." - Martin Terma
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Re: [Discuss] color laser printer

[Jack Coats]

Ahh yes.  The wax ice cubes the Phaser used.  The wax sublimation process
worked
well.  The only problem I had was leaving the prints in the car in Texas
summer.  The
wax ran and the pages stuck together.  Still it did 'just work'.  When
working at
a semi-conduction maker in Austin TX, the only thing I ever did was add
more 'ice cubes'
to the wax feeder.  I have no idea what the wax cost but it did print on
plain paper
(at the time that was a feature!).
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Re: [Discuss] color laser printer

[Jack Coats]

I have an old Samsung CLP-300 series color laser.  It isn't as rugged as my
older HP Laserjet P, but it is color.

The only maintenance I have done after 8 years is replace the toner cart's.
 I even use no-name replacement toner.
There are 4 cart's, and the black is larger than the rest.  There is also a
'waste' cart, that is designed to be replaced
but I just empty it (kind of messy, but works) and just put it back in.  (I
put it in a doubled plastic bag with the handle
sticking out, shake it,  Wait a few moments for the dust to settle, then
extract the cartridge.  Double tie the plastic
bag with the waste toner, and discard it.  The cartridge just goes back
into the printer.  This whole process only
takes a couple of minutes, but I do it outside.)

I do not refill cart's (I used to refill inkjet, but no more :) )

My printer may go a month without printing, then we might print a couple of
reams.  Duplexing is 'manual' rather than
automatic and I do it on occasion.  It is pretty easy.  Duplexing would be
nice, but I would rather have built in
networking (at least wired but preferably both wired and wireless).

The toner I purchase is often from eBay or abcink.com or supermediastore.com
depending on the lowest cost
'set' of cart's.  I purchase an entire set normally and replace each color
as needed rather than all at once.  Once I
purchased just a black (it is a little larger, but you use it more often).
 I also keep a spare set on the shelf for when
something goes empty.  The monitoring software from Samsung seems to work
pretty well to know the status
of the level of carts or if the waste cart needs to be emptied.

I have not had to replace any of the other user replaceable parts (fuser,
and I think there is something else too).

I am sure there are better printers, and I have no idea what printer I
would purchase at this time.  But to get me to
do long term purchases, I do a lot of research (probably more than it
reasonable given the $$ volume involved).

Hope that helps.


On Tue, Jun 10, 2014 at 6:46 AM, Edward Ned Harvey (blu) 
wrote:

> > From: discuss-bounces+blu=nedharvey@blu.org [mailto:discuss-
> > bounces+blu=nedharvey@blu.org] On Behalf Of Tom Metro
> >
> > another reason why I favor laser
> > printers over inkjets is that you can leave them unused for several
> > months and not have the ink cartridges dry out.
>
> I don't know if this is universally fixed on all inkjets now and moving
> forward, but ...
> At least in the Canon PIXMA line, this has not been a problem in the last
> several years.
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>



-- 
><> ... Jack

"Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart"... Colossians 3:23
"If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the precipitate" -
Henry J. Tillman
"Anyone who has never made a mistake, has never tried anything new." -
Albert Einstein
"You don't manage people; you manage things. You lead people." - Admiral
Grace Hopper, USN
"a nanosecond is the time it takes electrons to propigate 11.8 inches" - "
- http://youtu.be/JEpsKnWZrJ8
"Life is complex: it has a real part and an imaginary part." - Martin Terma
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Re: [Discuss] Antenna Signal Issues

[Jack Coats]

In a wifi setup I have, I found it helped greatly to get a flat pannel
antenna.  It is directional, but 180 degrees not a 'beam'.  Still, it
helped boost reception for my situation.  The antenna generates a cardioid
pattern, so most of the 'active area' is out front and little behind.

Basically anywhere mostly in front of the antenna I got better
reception/transimission.


On Wed, Jun 4, 2014 at 10:37 AM, Bill Horne  wrote:

> On 6/4/2014 9:25 AM, Matt Shields wrote:
>
>> This is not computer or linux related but I'm hoping that someone on the
>> list might have some technical experience in radio signals or wireless
>> systems for audio engineering.
>>
>
> Wouldn't you rather talk about DMARC? ;-)
>
>  I have the following wireless equipment.  ...
>>
>> So the issue we think we have is range issue.  Can I buy a high gain
>> directional antenna and a splitter and run cables to each of the
>> devices(single antenna array)?  Or do I need to have the mic's and IEM's
>> use 2 separate antenna's since one is send and one is receive?  Or do I
>> need to have every system use a separate antenna?
>>
>
> Splitters cost power; as much as 1/2 of your power can be lost when using
> them.
>
> Directional antennas are a double-edged sword: you get /some/added gain in
> /some/ direction, but they are never perfect, and will tend to leave dead
> spots in odd places.
>
> I suggest you start simply: elevate the transmitters and receivers above
> the floor as much as you can, for example, by placing them on top of
> emergency lights. Try to get wireless mic receivers out in the middle of
> the crowd instead of on the stage: they work better when tied to
> ceiling-mounted video projectors in the middle of the room.
>
> Let us know how well that works. Simplest is always better.
>
> Bill
>
> --
> Bill Horne
> William Warren Consulting
> 339-364-8487
>
> ___
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>



-- 
><> ... Jack

"Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart"... Colossians 3:23
"If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the precipitate" -
Henry J. Tillman
"Anyone who has never made a mistake, has never tried anything new." -
Albert Einstein
"You don't manage people; you manage things. You lead people." - Admiral
Grace Hopper, USN
"a nanosecond is the time it takes electrons to propigate 11.8 inches" - "
- http://youtu.be/JEpsKnWZrJ8
"Life is complex: it has a real part and an imaginary part." - Martin Terma
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Re: [Discuss] SSD drives vs. Mechanical drives

[Jack Coats]

For a laptop or even primary drive on small desktop, SSD.  For bulk data
anywhere, HD.
HD, like tapes used to be, is my 'security blanket'.


On Wed, May 7, 2014 at 3:45 PM, Jerry Feldman  wrote:

>
> On 05/07/2014 03:49 PM, Richard Pieri wrote:
> > Jerry Feldman wrote:
> >> Why do they lie about sync completion.
> > To inflate benchmark performance numbers.
> >
> Ok.
> So, if you had to buy a new 1TB drive and you had a choice between a
> high quality consumer SSD and a mechanical drive at the same price, what
> would you buy?
>
> --
> Jerry Feldman 
> Boston Linux and Unix
> PGP key id:3BC1EB90
> PGP Key fingerprint: 49E2 C52A FC5A A31F 8D66  C0AF 7CEA 30FC 3BC1 EB90
>
>
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> http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
>
>


-- 
><> ... Jack

"Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart"... Colossians 3:23
"If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the precipitate" -
Henry J. Tillman
"Anyone who has never made a mistake, has never tried anything new." -
Albert Einstein
"You don't manage people; you manage things. You lead people." - Admiral
Grace Hopper, USN
"a nanosecond is the time it takes electrons to propigate 11.8 inches" - "
- http://youtu.be/JEpsKnWZrJ8
"Life is complex: it has a real part and an imaginary part." - Martin Terma
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Re: [Discuss] recent Internet speed upgrade by Comcast?

[Jack Coats]

It might not make short term business sense, but doing the long term
upgrade to their infrastructure is in their best interest to keep their
business viable.

US ISPs of all kinds are getting bad press with the USA being the highest
price and slowest network of all developed countries.

My guess is they aren't about to lower their income (your cost) but they
can do the next best thing in providing better connectivity especially
where it is of no significant cost to them.

They need to work on making us believe we are getting good service for our
cash, and real competition would not result in significantly better
service.  If they do this, they can stay the 800lb gorilla in the room for
a long time.  If not, and customers demand it, eventually there will be
google to the desktop, or direct broadcast mesh or satellite networking for
a reasonable price after a few more court battles are fought over current
ISP 'benevolent monopoly' philosophy.

At least that is my guess.  It is probably wrong.
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Re: [Discuss] SSD drives vs. Mechanical drives

[Jack Coats]

That is the difference between 'oh damn' backup protection (missing or
corrupt file or two)
and 'oh sh%*' full restore protection.

Fastest full restores are from system images in my experience, second is
from 'build a new system'
then restore the data' scenario's.

Just a few missing or corrupt files can be handled easily
with something like crashplan (even backing up to secondary drives
regularly, or to another
system on your network, or a friends network, all that without paying $$ to
crashplan).
I restored 3 files I deleted accidently a few days ago this morning.  Easy
peazy.

I have done image backups before.  Good for mission critical things that
must get running
fast after hardware failure.  I like the idea of images for 'base systems'
and dynamic data
is restored from regular large scale backups.  Pretty reliable and can be
done more
quickly than many other ways I have seen.

Yes, I fed my family on doing backups and disaster recovery for 20+ years
for banks, fortune 500
companies, healthcare groups, and little businesses.  Not the worlds best,
but many worse than
me are out there! :)

The options listed above are a small but rational subset of doing backups.

Personally I used crashplan even though my network to the outside world is
limited.  So I backup
most important things to 'my cloud' (google docs, or amazon, or whatever,
but I do know where
things are) AND I do full data (not system level) backups to on-site disks
on different machines.
On machines I use more heavily, I have external drives and use crashplan to
backup to there
on 15 minute basis.

Is this perfect?  No.  It is adequate for a retiree and spouse.

For hosting things, I do that on someone elses server, and keep a backup on
site (at my
house) for WHEN it gets stomped on by baddies (it has happened more than
once, but
not with my current hosting provider, but they are not a heavily used
sites) and no dynamic
content.


On Mon, May 5, 2014 at 2:50 PM, Richard Pieri wrote:

> Kent Borg wrote:
> > The term "backup" tends to refer to having historical copies of data,
> > usually with a notable delay in how long it takes to restore the data.
>
> Not necessarily. Depends on the medium used.
>
> > I would suggest that with flash, hardware redundancy (external to
> > whatever proprietary hocus-pocus is already in a flash product) is wise.
> > Something present and immediately bootable.
>
> Repeat after me: redundant disks do not provide data integrity.
>
> Redundant disks -- be they rotating platters or flash chips -- will keep
> the system running if one fails but they won't protect your data from
> corruption or loss.
>
> --
> Rich P.
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>



-- 
><> ... Jack

"Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart"... Colossians 3:23
"If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the precipitate" -
Henry J. Tillman
"Anyone who has never made a mistake, has never tried anything new." -
Albert Einstein
"You don't manage people; you manage things. You lead people." - Admiral
Grace Hopper, USN
"a nanosecond is the time it takes electrons to propigate 11.8 inches" - "
- http://youtu.be/JEpsKnWZrJ8
"Life is complex: it has a real part and an imaginary part." - Martin Terma
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Re: [Discuss] SSD drives vs. Mechanical drives

[Jack Coats]

from my old days of doing performance analysis of round brown and spinning
devices,
performance from lack of seek, rotational delay, and head positioning time
(track to track)
should take quite a bite out of the delays associated with them.

The only delays I could think of should be buss access and addressing
delays caused
by buss contention or CPU requirements to calculate required access
information (but hey,
disks had that too, linear sector access got rid of most of the CHS
calculations though - that is
cylinder head sector).

Sorry, this provides no new information, but it feels good to remember as
semi-useful what
I used to know :)


On Sat, May 3, 2014 at 8:49 AM, Jerry Feldman  wrote:

> I have seen some competing posts on other forums
> SSD drives are certainly lighter and faster than mechanical hard drives.
> The comment on Windows Boston that has no figures to back up his claim
> is that the SSD drives actually are less power efficient than mechanical
> hard drives because of their additional reliance on the CPU. And
> certainly SSD drives are more expensive.
>
> It would be interesting to see some pros and cons.
>
> --
> Jerry Feldman 
> Boston Linux and Unix
> PGP key id:3BC1EB90
> PGP Key fingerprint: 49E2 C52A FC5A A31F 8D66  C0AF 7CEA 30FC 3BC1 EB90
>
>
>
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>
>


-- 
><> ... Jack

"Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart"... Colossians 3:23
"If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the precipitate" -
Henry J. Tillman
"Anyone who has never made a mistake, has never tried anything new." -
Albert Einstein
"You don't manage people; you manage things. You lead people." - Admiral
Grace Hopper, USN
"a nanosecond is the time it takes electrons to propigate 11.8 inches" - "
- http://youtu.be/JEpsKnWZrJ8
"Life is complex: it has a real part and an imaginary part." - Martin Terma
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Re: [Discuss] Upgraded to Ubuntu 14.04...can't connect to wifi with rtl8723ae driver

[Jack Coats]

http://www.ubuntuask.com/q/answers-rtl8723ae-dirver-problem-ubuntu-13-04-289414.html

This link MIGHT help.  RealTek devices work for me but they always generate
issues whenever I upgrade if I remember right.  Best choice for the long
run is get a non RT NIC that is on the supported list.


On Sat, Apr 26, 2014 at 5:44 PM, Tom Metro  wrote:

> Randy Cole wrote:
> > Sees the router, keeps trying but never connects.
>
> Could be many things. WiFi seems to offer woefully inadequate
> diagnostics for the connection and authentication process.
>
>
> > Can I install the module(s) from one of the old kernels, or will that
> cause
> > a crash?
>
> My understanding that is compiled modules are not portable across
> kernels. There may be qualifiers on that, such as it'll work, as long as
> the ABI hasn't changed.
>
>
> > Anybody got any ideas?
>
> Assuming there aren't alternate driver packages that work with your
> interface, I'd seek out the upstream project responsible for the driver,
> see if there is a newer version, and compile it for your current kernel.
>
>  -Tom
>
> --
> Tom Metro
> The Perl Shop, Newton, MA, USA
> "Predictable On-demand Perl Consulting."
> http://www.theperlshop.com/
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>



-- 
><> ... Jack

"Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart"... Colossians 3:23
"If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the precipitate" -
Henry J. Tillman
"Anyone who has never made a mistake, has never tried anything new." -
Albert Einstein
"You don't manage people; you manage things. You lead people." - Admiral
Grace Hopper, USN
"a nanosecond is the time it takes electrons to propigate 11.8 inches" - "
- http://youtu.be/JEpsKnWZrJ8
"Life is complex: it has a real part and an imaginary part." - Martin Terma
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Re: [Discuss] Linux file systems

[Jack Coats]

I took a VSAM internals class.  It was interesting and super for the day.
It was based on IBMs Virtual Storage Access Method they used to
manage virtual memory, but it expanded and turned into a better alternative
to 'ISAM' Index Storage Access Method that was used for database kinds
of things without going to using a DBMS (data base management system
that were big bulky hunks of software in the day).

Anyway, VSAM was fast and efficient on the mainframes that are less powerful
than your iPhone is today.

I used it basically as an indexed file system to get to fixed or variable
length
record entries quickly.  It would take care of 'overflow' for you, but you
did have
to re-organize it occasionally (much less than ISAM).  I used it instead of
DBMS systems many time for basically the same purpose.

Yea, the IBMers that pushed VSAM were pretty much speed freak hard core
software types that communicated well with accademia.



On Fri, Mar 28, 2014 at 9:07 AM, Mike Small  wrote:

> Jerry Feldman  writes:
>
> > I'm a fan of btree file systems going back to the 1970s. IBM used it on
> > their mainframes (VSAM) back then.
> >
>
> Funny, I was just reading how Matthew Dillon intends to change from using
> btree in Hammer 1 to something else in Hammer 2:
>
> http://gitweb.dragonflybsd.org/dragonfly.git/blob_plain/HEAD:/sys/vfs/hammer2/DESIGN
> (via http://www.shiningsilence.com/dbsdlog/2014/03/18/13651.html)
>
> I don't pretend to understand the implications or pretty much anything
> in that design document, just thought you might find it interesting.
>
> --
> Mike Small
> sma...@panix.com
> ___
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> http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
>



-- 
><> ... Jack

"Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart"... Colossians 3:23
"If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the precipitate" -
Henry J. Tillman
"Anyone who has never made a mistake, has never tried anything new." -
Albert Einstein
"You don't manage people; you manage things. You lead people." - Admiral
Grace Hopper, USN
"a nanosecond is the time it takes electrons to propigate 11.8 inches" - "
- http://youtu.be/JEpsKnWZrJ8
"Life is complex: it has a real part and an imaginary part." - Martin Terma
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Re: [Discuss] Why use Linux?

[Jack Coats]

Somehow this starts sounding like a bad Tom Cruise movie :)


On Wed, Feb 12, 2014 at 9:02 AM, Bill Horne  wrote:

> On 2/12/2014 6:56 AM, js wrote:
>
>> one thing you have not mentioned are any back doors put in proprietary
>> operating systems by the orders of the US government. while it may not
>> be relevant to many, it is relevant to some people [and i'm talking
>> about whistle blowers or human rights activists instead of child porn
>> merchants].
>>
>
> No offense, but I don't feel one is different from another. As soon as we
> start to say that /some/ speech is "good" and /some/ speech is not, we lose.
>
> After all, a photograph of a naked child lying dead in a ditch at My Lai
> could be interpreted as  "child porn" - and Robert Mapplethorpe's
> photographs of partially naked children could be (and was) interpreted as
> having redeeming social merit.
>
> Porn, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder, and the question is if
> we, as a society, should allow our government to examine what people
> /might/ say, before they say it.
>
> My $0.02. YMMV.
>
> Bill
>
> --
> Bill Horne
> William Warren Consulting
> http://www.william-warren.com/
> 339-364-8487
>
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> http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
>



-- 
><> ... Jack

"Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart"... Colossians 3:23
"If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the precipitate" -
Henry J. Tillman
"Anyone who has never made a mistake, has never tried anything new." -
Albert Einstein
"You don't manage people; you manage things. You lead people." - Admiral
Grace Hopper, USN
"a nanosecond is the time it takes electrons to propigate 11.8 inches" - "
- http://youtu.be/JEpsKnWZrJ8
"Life is complex: it has a real part and an imaginary part." - Martin Terma
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Re: [Discuss] Why use Linux?

[Jack Coats]

Yes, developers give away some rights if they develop under GPL, but
they have the option to NOT develop for the open community and do
their own closed source efforts.

Many are not willing to do this and go open source.  I know several
developers
that bemoan being 'required' to go open source, basically because they have
not
found a reliable method of monetizing their efforts.

Yes, sell hardware, support and installation services, books, classes is all
fine, but they are comparatively 'high touch' sources of income where the
software licensing approach is much 'lower touch' and scales if you have
a product the public 'must have'.

If not developing for the GPL community using those resources, it can be
more difficult to make money because the community can be more limited
(if you use non-standard architecture, or don't provide the 'killer app', or
are not one with deep pockets (like many hardware vendors or mega-software
houses)).

This argument has been discussed all during my career (and before, my time
using computers started in 1970 and for pay in 1972 or 3).

In our current society it appears PC to give away software, but somehow
the software must be paid for to keep the developers in coffee, pizza, and
to
pay the rent, etc.  Good developers are worth their weight in gold plated
latinum.
And a few of those are well compensated.  Many aren't.  But those that
aren't
still do what they must to get by.

I moved from being a programmer and systems analyst to sysadmin (first
as a mainframe systems programmer, then moved to small machines - like
Sun, then Linux and Windows when I was forced to. - my dislike for Windows
came from Bill Gates 'Open Letter to Computer Hobbyists', calling all of us
thieves for all practical purposes.  So M$ has never been high on my list.
Yes, you can Google it and read a copy of that letter online several
places.)

Still GPL has done lots of good for MANY users, application developers,
systems geeks, and users.  Many developers (typically application or
system developers) make good money using GPL software for customers.

IMHO, GPL (in its many forms) is not the nirvana that many want us to
believe, and there are
still needs for proprietary software and development.  But as time goes by
it appears more and more are being developed on the GPL backbone.  And I
do expect the trend to continue.

What could change it?  Some deep pockets backing court cases to gut the
GPL, or
for some new 'licensing measure' that makes it unpopular with developers
and users.

But that is just my .02 pesos on the subject.
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Re: [Discuss] List quiet, or did I fall off?

[Jack Coats]

Quite, yes.  Did you fall off? Possibly 


On Thu, Dec 26, 2013 at 8:27 AM, Derek Atkins  wrote:

> I haven't received any email from BLU since Dec 17th.  Has the list
> really been that quiet for 9 days or did I fall off?
>
> -derek
> --
>Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory
>Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board  (SIPB)
>URL: http://web.mit.edu/warlord/PP-ASEL-IA N1NWH
>warl...@mit.eduPGP key available
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> http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
>



-- 
><> ... Jack

On today's episode of 'This Ol Geek'...
"Texas is the finest portion of the globe that has ever blessed my vision."
- Sam Houston
"Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart"... Colossians 3:23
"If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the precipitate" -
Henry J. Tillman
"Anyone who has never made a mistake, has never tried anything new." -
Albert Einstein
"You don't manage people; you manage things. You lead people." - Admiral
Grace Hopper, USN
"Life is complex: it has a real part and an imaginary part." - Martin Terma
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Re: [Discuss] No posts after Nov 24

[Jack Coats]

Hard to think of this group going quiet. ... I guess all that is left
is us crickets after an over abundant Thanksgiving feast.

On Fri, Nov 29, 2013 at 7:20 AM, Bob Dunphy  wrote:
> I have not seen a post after Nov 24is it that quiet?  Or are there
> problems?
> ___
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> Discuss@blu.org
> http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss



-- 
><> ... Jack

On today's episode of 'This Ol Geek'...
"Texas is the finest portion of the globe that has ever blessed my
vision." - Sam Houston
"Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart"... Colossians 3:23
"If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the precipitate"
- Henry J. Tillman
"Anyone who has never made a mistake, has never tried anything new." -
Albert Einstein
"You don't manage people; you manage things. You lead people." -
Admiral Grace Hopper, USN
"Life is complex: it has a real part and an imaginary part." - Martin Terma
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Re: [Discuss] ssd's in linux

[Jack Coats]

We tend to go over the basics every time someone else asks the
question that begs for basic answers.

Few, if any of us, review archives, wikis, or do general searches
before asking questions.  If we did, the list would be full of cricket
noises.  That is why I tend to not reply to most of the posts I
receive, but sometimes I chime in, adding to the entropy of the
universe.

On Sat, Nov 9, 2013 at 9:16 AM, Edward Ned Harvey (blu)
 wrote:
>> From: discuss-bounces+blu=nedharvey@blu.org [mailto:discuss-
>> bounces+blu=nedharvey@blu.org] On Behalf Of Jack Coats
>>
>> I found having 'enough ram', don't configure swap, or swap to a
>
> How many times have we had this conversation?  Agreed you should never swap 
> active memory, and therefore, you need to have enough memory in your system.  
> And the linux kernel will use free memory for caching & buffering to gain 
> performance.
>
> But if you add some swap to your system, your kernel will swap out idle 
> processes, whenever the idle process is less active than some working cache 
> data.  By giving your system some swap, you gain performance, because the 
> kernel is able to keep something in cache which is more valuable than a 
> zombie process or whatever that could be put aside to make more room for more 
> cache.



-- 
><> ... Jack

On today's episode of 'This Ol Geek'...
"Texas is the finest portion of the globe that has ever blessed my
vision." - Sam Houston
"Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart"... Colossians 3:23
"If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the precipitate"
- Henry J. Tillman
"Anyone who has never made a mistake, has never tried anything new." -
Albert Einstein
"You don't manage people; you manage things. You lead people." -
Admiral Grace Hopper, USN
"Life is complex: it has a real part and an imaginary part." - Martin Terma
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Re: [Discuss] ssd's in linux

[Jack Coats]

Sounds like an episode of Nikita ... chilling RAM so it has different
characteristics or uses almost no power while it is moved to another
device.

OK, where is that rock I came out from under? ...

On Fri, Nov 8, 2013 at 7:03 PM, Daniel Feenberg  wrote:
>
>
> On Fri, 8 Nov 2013, Bill Bogstad wrote:
>
>> On Fri, Nov 8, 2013 at 4:34 PM, Richard Pieri 
>> wrote:
>>>
>>> Kent Borg wrote:


 I don't think that passes DoD requirements either.
>>>
>>> 
>>> Or you could use RAM-based SSDs instead of flash. Almost instant
>>> sanitizing
>>> when power is removed.
>>
>>
>> Where "almost instant" means up to ten minutes if the RAM has been
>> pre-chilled.
>
>
> Yes, but how exactly will the intruder get to pre-chill your RAM before you
> turn off the machine? And why would he bother? If he has physical access to
> your machine while it is still turned on, why would he wait for you to turn
> it off? Am I missing a common threat?
>
> Daniel Feenberg
>
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-- 
><> ... Jack

On today's episode of 'This Ol Geek'...
"Texas is the finest portion of the globe that has ever blessed my
vision." - Sam Houston
"Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart"... Colossians 3:23
"If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the precipitate"
- Henry J. Tillman
"Anyone who has never made a mistake, has never tried anything new." -
Albert Einstein
"You don't manage people; you manage things. You lead people." -
Admiral Grace Hopper, USN
"Life is complex: it has a real part and an imaginary part." - Martin Terma
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Re: [Discuss] ssd's in linux

[Jack Coats]

I found having 'enough ram', don't configure swap, or swap to a
non-ssd device, and set the 'no access time' flag for any file systems
in the device and it will make your machine scream.  Also, it can
prolong life if you remove all 'time' variables, other than 'create
time' on your file systems.  Consider turning off 'all' logging.

Oh, for me 'enough ram' is either all the machine can hold or all I
can afford, and as fast as the machine will usefully handle (no reason
to put 2ns ram if 50ns is all the hardware will handle, etc).

If you run Linux, it uses 'extra ram' for caching by default.
Possibly changing that ratio can help by allowing it to keep more
programs in memory and less 'pre-emptive' file system caching.  I
forgot the switches for this, but they can be found without to much
problem.

Most of the other warnings about 'don't install what you don't need'
and 'remove unused components' still make sense to keep a screaming
beast's volume tuned up and loud.
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Re: [Discuss] open source graphics drivers

[Jack Coats]

I had a friend that would purchase 2 new video cards that were not
supported in Linux.  Then go walk the halls at MIT on a Friday or Saturday
night, looking for a electronics/computer geek that he would pay some beer
money plus a "Free" high-end video card for the parameters needed to get
X11 working with it. ... Today cards are more complicated and just finding
scan rates, etc with the graphic processors being as or more powerful than
the CPUs in the systems where they run.  ... Oh yes, my friend would
'release' the specs needed to drive the cards for free on the 'net.

Still, finding energetic young geek or a few, that we could get to do the
reverse engineering right could be a cost effective solution AND support
them in their cyber-geekieness :)


On Tue, Oct 29, 2013 at 6:39 PM, Richard Pieri wrote:

> Martin Owens wrote:
>
>> We don't get to act on that. We can hope on it, but writing better
>> drivers is more convincing to a company than sitting on ones hands.
>>
>
> If that assertion were true then nVidia and ATi would have opened up their
> architectures ten years ago. Instead, the trade secret mentality in both
> companies not only kept most things closed and proprietary but added layers
> of obfuscation to make it extremely difficult to reverse engineer their
> products.
>
>  That's what reverse engineering is about. Learning how the hardware
>> works. It's not perfect, but with enough resources it can be done.
>>
>
> Given what's been discovered from the documents nVidia has released so
> far? It's no where near good, never mind perfect. There's a lot about the
> Kepler architecture and its various implementations that the reverse
> engineers got wrong. Example: the red screen bug which has been frustrating
> developers for something like two years. Not a bug at all. It's a debug
> setting left enabled on some cards at the factory.
>
>  I wonder how much of the softening has been Valve's John Carmack poking
>> their CEO in the ribs about his awful yet good proprietary drivers.
>>
>
> Certainly a contributing factor, but I figure Android and CUDA/OpenCL have
> more to do with it. Steam Machines may be revenue in the future but Android
> and CUDA are revenue today.
>
> By the way, it's Gabe Newell at Valve. John Carmack is over at iD Software
> and Armadillo Aerospace.
>
> --
> Rich P.
> __**_
> Discuss mailing list
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> http://lists.blu.org/mailman/**listinfo/discuss
>



-- 
><> ... Jack

On today's episode of 'This Ol Geek'...
"Texas is the finest portion of the globe that has ever blessed my vision."
- Sam Houston
"Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart"... Colossians 3:23
"If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the precipitate" -
Henry J. Tillman
"Anyone who has never made a mistake, has never tried anything new." -
Albert Einstein
"You don't manage people; you manage things. You lead people." - Admiral
Grace Hopper, USN
"Life is complex: it has a real part and an imaginary part." - Martin Terma
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Re: [Discuss] Printer recommendations sought

[Jack Coats]

Some time ago (8 years?) I went and purchased a 'going out of
manufacture' color laser printer with separate toner cartridges.  I
just wish I had sprung for the extra $100 for networked version.

I got a Samsung CLP and it uses the CLP300 series cartridges.
Inexpensive to purchase toner, and it doesn't need much maintenance.

I got a color laser rather than inkjet because of the lifecycle cost
of printer + ink ... In my household use, we run about 5 to 10 pages
per month, not enough to keep inkjet cartridges fresh.  But on
occasion I will print 200 to 500 pages, front and back.  Doing duplex
manually is easy with this printer/drivers, so a duplexing option
would be convenient, but not required.

Items I look for:
  Lower full lifecycle cost, assume 5 years, 240 pages per year, and
3000 extra pages sometime in life.

  Initial cost
  Service record for that series of printer
  Continuing cost of ink/toner given our 240 page per year average.
  Other maintenance (cartridges, etc)
  Separate cartridge for each color PLUS larger black cartridge is nice
  Low standby power
  Paper tray (100+ pages) of standard (letter size) paper.

 Nice to have:
  networking - now days a requirement, prefer wifi over bluetooth, USB
not needed if wifi or wired work well
  duplex printing - in the past it caused issues due to the mechanical
difficulty, these days much of that issue has been fixed.
  lower power usage during printing
  ease of driver support (Linux, windows, Android, Mac, - still using
XP here, but that will probably change)
  Centronics interface and USB are nice, but not requried.
  Smaller physical footprint
  Larger paper trays (500?)
  Secondary paper tray for odd size paper (B? A? Legal? +letter size required)
  Straight through feed (allows rigid or semi-rigid stock like
cardboard or poster board or printed circuit board)
  Ability to use bulk toner or larger cartridges to keep from having
to change often.
  Easy home-refill of toner.  Easy secondarily inexpensive toner availability.
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Re: [Discuss] Comcast Encryption

[Jack Coats]

Neighbor? (ducks)

Out in the sticks where I can't get cable or DSL (or whatever it is
being marketed as), I went satellite.

3 miles in any direction there is either Charter, Comcast or AT&T DSL.
 Clearwire wireless is in the area but they are 'full' and not
accepting customers, and I can't 'see' their signal from here.  Also
only get Fox, what was CW and CBS TV broadcast (ok also some
independent stations if I want them).  This is 25 miles from downtown
Nashville TN.

We have Viasat as marketed by Exede.  Speed is OK, latency not bad,
but the 10G limit for a month is a killer.  Limiting what I do I make
it about 15 to 20 days into the month before 'limits' come on. Limited
speed is 50kbps, like a dialup modem, but still have 'unlimited use'
between midnight and 5AM so that is when network backups happen and it
goes back to 'normal speed' then.

The midnight to 5AM is not metered or charged to your account, so it
helps the 10G go further.  Just no significant online video watching.

On Mon, Sep 9, 2013 at 11:11 AM, Joe Polcari  wrote:
> So how do you get internet now?
>
>
> Sent from my android device.
>
> -Original Message-
> From: ma...@mohawksoft.com
> To: discuss@blu.org
> Sent: Sun, 08 Sep 2013 5:54 PM
> Subject: [Discuss] Comcast Encryption
>
> I just bought a $14.99 amplified antenna for my house. (Microcenter) I can
> now cancel the last vestiges of cable TV. I am now broadcast and internet
> only. I get all the local channels I was getting before encryption for
> free.
>
> I refuse to rent a box to decrypt channels that are broadcast through the
> air unencrypted for free. Worse yet, "basic" cable is around $10 a month
> with additional charges for additional television sets.
>
> So, if you have two televisions, you pay comcast $180 a year for the
> privilege of renting two boxes to remove the encryption that they put
> there in order to make you need the box.
>
> F*&^king Thieves.
>
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-- 
><> ... Jack

On today's episode of 'This Ol Geek'...
"Texas is the finest portion of the globe that has ever blessed my
vision." - Sam Houston
"Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart"... Colossians 3:23
"If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the precipitate"
- Henry J. Tillman
"Anyone who has never made a mistake, has never tried anything new." -
Albert Einstein
"You don't manage people; you manage things. You lead people." -
Admiral Grace Hopper, USN
"Life is complex: it has a real part and an imaginary part." - Martin Terma
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Re: [Discuss] how to contract correctly?

[Jack Coats]

Eric,

Market yourself ALL THE TIME.   Go to Church, and let everyone know
discretely you are contractor and willing to 'help' for pay.  Go to
networking do-good organizations and do the same.  Kiwana's is big in this
area.  Others have JrChaimber of Commerce, etc.  Stay active in opensource
projects, and don't be afraid to hang out a shingle saying you will help
customers use it (a former employer did this with Asterisk VOIP systems,
did well and had a direct line to 'developers' for priority support, as
well as a way to give back.  Employer sold white-box type VOIP systems.
 Business cycle dried up, so did my paycheck.  Still I liked the business
model).

Get business cards, nice but cheap, and hand them out like popcorn.  When
meeting a receptionist, give them 2, on for their 'file' and another to
pass in to whomever you meet.  Yes, we all hate this, and most get trashed.
 But if 1 helps make a sale you have paid for a case of them.

If you have some slow/no pay customers, you MUST FIRE YOUR CUSTOMER before
they drag you down.  Even suggest a competitor that could serve them, so
leave them smiling, just not over taking your nickels.  This all goes to
keep track of expenses, payables, recievables, etc.

Get a line of credit, and use it just enough to keep it active.  Paying
interest to someone else is the last thing you need.  Be prepared to take
credit cards (Paypal or Square, allow you to have a 'free' swipe on your
smart phone.)  Don't overly encourage it just to keep your overhead down,
but if it is between taking their money and not, take the money.

Make friends with lawyer, banker, insurance dude, CPA, realtor, SBA SCORE
advisor.  They can help make a 'core team' to get good long term advice
from.  Pay them, you will need them all on your side long term (SCORE
advisor is free).  CPA can also act a a tax guy but other financial advice
(whether you can 'holdem' and stay in business or it is time to 'foldem'
and find a gig under some other employer (sorry for the bad refference to
the GAMBLER song)) can be worth lots of gold.  But they have to be people
you trust to work FOR you and not for their own bill padding (yes, I get
cynical, but being sceptical is not a bad trait).

Make friends of your competitors.  Know what they can do.  Sub to them when
over-booked, and get on their 'prefered sub' list.  Even head hunters can
be your friend and you can work (at a reduced rate) under their shingle, if
you don't have other stuff going on.

A old consultant friend of mine said he spend 50% of his time billing, but
no more.  The rest is in schmoosing, 'marketing', drinking coffee, passing
out LOTS of business cards.

 Get a MINIMUM of a cheap domain and web hosting just to have a place to
put your picture, and get 'private domain' email.  GoogleOffice was free
for small companies, now they charge a little.  It is OK, but you can  do
similar by bolting your own 'office tools' together.  Still you want
someone else (even Godaddy or similar) to 'host' the domain.  You need to
stay busy with 'solving customers problems', not fixing yours.

You can get incorporated cheaply online, but you still have local/state
fees that must be and stay paid.  Places like 'LegalZoom' (not a
recommendation, just a sample off the top of my head) provides cheap
paperwork to file, but no legal advice.  Some lawyers will work with you
and that, some won't.  Consider at least an LLC if not full Corporation,
and keep your corporate veil in place, it works.

Yes, I have started and stopped a few times over the years.  As always
YMMV, and we all wish you the best of luck.

Also, go to SBA.GOV and to SCORE.org to get their perspective.  MA probably
has some resources too!
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Re: [Discuss] Simple server monitoring

[Jack Coats]

Some days it is nice to be retired in TN.  Don't miss the congestion,
traffic, people under stress (including me).  I do miss the co-workers
(the nice ones anyway, and that is most of them), and paychecks.  But
in all life there are tradeoffs.

Derek & All, have a great Friday.
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Re: [Discuss] payments on the web over 10k?

[Jack Coats]

Google has a pay feature (unless it is one of the things they did away with).
I figure if they are trying to compete with Amazon, that is something
they want to do.

Just a thought.


><> ... Jack
--
Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart... Colossians 3:23
"If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the precipitate"
- Henry J. Tillman
"Anyone who has never made a mistake, has never tried anything new." -
Albert Einstein
"You don't manage people; you manage things. You lead people." -
Admiral Grace Hopper, USN
Life is complex: it has a real part and an imaginary part. - Martin Terma
“Our virtues and our failings are inseparable, like force and matter.
When they separate, man is no more.” - Nikola Tesla
I don't enjoy a massacre of ads.  Hackaday.com says this should
slaughter their existance.


On Tue, Aug 20, 2013 at 1:42 PM, Tom Metro  wrote:
> Jack Coats wrote:
>> Eric Chadbourne wrote:
>>> A client of mine needs a store on his site that can accept payments well
>>> over $10,000 per transaction. Paypal can't cut it. Any suggestions?
>>
>> If I remember the banking rules, PayPal might not want to deal with
>> this because it REQUIRES a report be made to the Feds for each
>> transaction at that level.
>
> It is my recollection as well that there are extra federal reporting
> requirements for transactions of $10K or greater.
>
>
>> Might be better to go to a bank to get a commercial account and a
>> charge card merchant account.
>
> Yes, quite possibly.
>
> A typical online payment setup consists of these elements:
>
> 1. shopping cart or other e-commerce software;
> 2. payment gateway (API used by your shopping cart);
> 3. merchant account (a service that takes credit card transactions,
> verifies them, and obtains funds from the CC provider);
> 4. bank account;
>
> and you'll find varying combinations of bundling. PayPal, for example,
> does all of these (they sort of provide a bank account; they're happy to
> hold your money and let you spend it through a debit card). Most vendors
> you'll find in the payment space do #2 and many bundle #2 and #3. Most
> banks will provide #3, in addition to #4, of course.
>
> I'd say if Braintree, which does #2 and #3, handles $10K+, then probably
> any other payment gateway provider will as well, as the reporting
> requirements likely fall on the underlying bank providing the merchant
> account or the bank account.
>
> The percentage-based transaction fees tend to be set by the merchant
> account (#3) provider, so you'll benefit from shopping around for that
> portion. Braintree, for example, will charge you 2.9% for their bundled
> solution, or you get your own merchant account and they'll sell you just
> the gateway (#2) service for $50/month. (There are also fixed
> per-transaction fees of $0.10 to $0.30, but irrelevant for large
> transactions.)
>
>
> Eric Chadbourne wrote:
>> These guys look interesting, https://www.braintreepayments.com/,
>> but I have never used them.
>
> I don't have direct experience with them, but they are the vendor Google
> has endorsed as the successor to its Google Checkout service, which it
> is shutting down[1] in a few months.
>
> 1. https://support.google.com/checkout/sell/answer/3080449
>
>
> Stripe (https://stripe.com/) provides the same level of bundling, with
> an emphasis on developer friendly APIs. Their pricing is the same 2.9%
> as Braintree and most other bundled providers.
>
> At $10K+ the commission fees are going to be significant, so you'll want
> to shop around. Ease of integration might end up being a secondary
> concern, as it won't take many transactions before you'll break even on
> higher up-front setup costs.
>
> For example, take a look at Amazon Payments
> (http://payments.amazon.com/), which offers a turn-key service covering
> #1 (a "Pay with Amazon" button) through #3 and charges commission on a
> sliding scale, with transactions of $10K+ costing 2.2%.
>
>  -Tom
>
> --
> Tom Metro
> Venture Logic, Newton, MA, USA
> "Enterprise solutions through open source."
> Professional Profile: http://tmetro.venturelogic.com/
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Re: [Discuss] payments on the web over 10k?

[Jack Coats]

If I remember the banking rules, PayPal might not want to deal with
this because it REQUIRES a report be made to the Feds for each
transaction at that level.

Might be better to go to a bank to get a commercial account and a
charge card merchant account.  Not as easy as a on-line credit card
service, but could be better in the long run with lower charges.  But
shop around.

A friend with a business has found BofA to be one of the hardest to
deal with and most expensive banks to deal with, but nationally they
seem to be ubiquitous.
><> ... Jack
--
Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart... Colossians 3:23
"If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the precipitate"
- Henry J. Tillman
"Anyone who has never made a mistake, has never tried anything new." -
Albert Einstein
"You don't manage people; you manage things. You lead people." -
Admiral Grace Hopper, USN
Life is complex: it has a real part and an imaginary part. - Martin Terma
“Our virtues and our failings are inseparable, like force and matter.
When they separate, man is no more.” - Nikola Tesla
I don't enjoy a massacre of ads.  Hackaday.com says this should
slaughter their existance.


On Tue, Aug 20, 2013 at 9:09 AM, Eric Chadbourne
 wrote:
> Hi All,
>
> A client of mine needs a store on his site that can accept payments well
> over $10,000 per transaction.  Paypal can't cut it.  Any suggestions?  These
> guys look interesting, https://www.braintreepayments.com/, but I have never
> used them.
>
> Thanks for any tips!
>
> --
> Eric Chadbourne
>
>
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Re: [Discuss] Effort to repeal Mass Tax on Software Services

[Jack Coats]

In the long run, we are all in this together.  Even if you or your
industry is not 'directly' taxed, we the taxpayers still pay for
government spending.

It seems lots of people only want 'others' to pay, but we are the
others.  IMHO, corporations don't 'pay', their customers do.  For my
purpose, I will take one of the most flagrant 'fine the corporate
culprits' suit in recent history, the tobacco industry.  Yes, they
paid the fine, but it is their customers that paid for it (in higher
prices, that won't come down even after the 'fines are recovered'.

There is only one entity to pay.  Taxpayers.

--

I just reread my diatribe, and you can stop reading here.  What
follows is at this point off topic, I think.  The rest is just
examples of govt 'punishing' companies, the law of unintended
consequences being applied, and what I saw as a 'ultimate' outcome.


Breaking up Standard Oil did no good in the long run.  The siblings
from Standard still exist and in some cases have grown, taken over
others, or have been taken over.  If you want to go chase them down,
you will find they are still, added together, the largest oil/gas
conglomerate world wide.  Some of the corporate pursuers like BP
(previously British Petroleum) purchased Amoco (one of the old
siblings of Standard Oil) and from friends still working there have
noted the corporate change that has made it a less friendly place to
work, even though they spend a LOT more on public relations.  Oh, if
you buy stock in BP, it is an ADR (a pseudo stock set up to allow US
citizens to by 'deposit receipts' of foreign companies, without having
to claim they own stock in a foreign company on their tax returns).


The Bell Telephone breakup was odd to watch.  Yes, the original AT&T
died eventually, but the most prolific of their siblings, Southwestern
Bell, started out by eating some of their sisters, then eventually
eating mommy, and assuming the AT&T name and deathstar logo.   The
current AT&T is larger than it ever was before $$ wise.  And without
the threat of being broken up like the old AT&T was, it has no need to
even display 'corporate good' or interest in the public as part of its
mission.  This has just turned the worst of AT&T into even a darker
company.


SUN computers was pretty good corporate citizen.  Not perfect but
pretty good.  Oracle has eaten it and killed the life of the vision of
SUN.  But IMHO there isn't much difference in Oracle and M$ ... both
are unclean in the area of corporate ethics and morals.


Yes, all these 'punished' the 'corporations', but really all it does
is shuffle desk chairs and for small shareholders, well they do get
punished and often loose everything.  Like in the GM and Chrysler
government takeovers.  There were several documented cases of
'lifetime' workers there investing their savings in 'corporate bonds'
that for years were considered 'safe' investments. (Yes, they screwed
up and did not diversify so if something did get 'wiped out' it would
be typically 10% that got wiped out. But that is another diatribe.)


Ok, now it is time to take a breath and go put on my pointy tin hat. :)
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Re: [Discuss] taxachusetts and the future of tech

[Jack Coats]

Good explanation, but it still doesn't say why not tax services by
lawyers and dry cleaners and accountants?

And other than just another 'place to milk' taxes, why sofware
services are taxed under transportation and not general funds?

Still looking forward to see what comes out of any upcoming revisions.
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Re: [Discuss] Effort to repeal Mass Tax on Software Services

[Jack Coats]

I don't live in MA, but you folks I do consider friends from visiting
back in the Y2K era, so I am interested.  And my son lives there now
(he stayed after graduating and is in business).

The taxes in MA have historically been higher than much of the rest of
the country.  I am not arguing whether this is good or bad, but it is
part of what has made MA.  But after my time there I also see that in
general more is expected of govt and it must be paid for somehow.
Overall, MA has come to a fair balance for the realities there.

Is this a 'good' tax or 'bad' tax, is really the debate.

I dislike it due to the limitations on independent contractors to
build and use tools, and take the tools they build with them.  If all
you do is to run programs others develop, this is not an issue, but if
you right code (even glue code, like the short bat or sh file used to
just make stuff run) it now belongs to the client.  This I see as the
major negative to this tax bill.  Historically if you wrote code,
depending on how your contract is written, it was 'free for use' by
the client and the programmer could ALSO 'take it with them' as they
left.  This new tax blocks this ability.  It also generates 'new
taxes' for any 'software purchases' that were not there before (other
than sales taxes?).

Politicians EVERYWHERE are looking for 'new revenue streams'.  This
one seems 'new' to them.  I wish there was a way to get the 'software
property rights' removed from 'tax code'.

Being an 'outsider', much of the nation does see MA as a leader in
many areas.  This particular saw and revenue stream I would like to
see NOT spread.

In the short term it may drive software contractors out of MA, in the
long run I don't want it to be yet another poison pill for the MA
business environment.
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Re: [Discuss] KeePassX

[Jack Coats]

> The NSA has computing facilities measured in acres.

That we pay for.  Thank you.
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Re: [Discuss] KeePassX

[Jack Coats]

Guess that is why I like the idea of 4096 bit keys.

Paranoid?  Only slightly.
Overkill?  Who knows what is coming next.
Would I like it to be better than that?  Yes.
Do I use is ALL THE TIME?  No, not QUITE that paranoid.  Now where did
I leave my tin foil hat?
><> ... Jack
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Re: [Discuss] email privacy/security

[Jack Coats]

Just figure that someone can or could read/see anything if it goes
over an 'out of house' network.
If it isn't something you want your spooks and grandmother to
read/see, don't do it over the net.

Anything less gives opportunities for security leaks.

There are some folks that don't understand that.  I know of people
that have made facebook posts that only 'friends' can see and got
fired for it.  Not degrading or demeaning, not naming names, but still
it happens.

There is only one secure IP based network I know of that still brags
'never been cracked'.  You can buy access to it, it is the SWIFT.com
network.  They are based in Belgium, but network is world wide and
highly secure.  They are like the 'FedWire' of the US Federal Reserve
for the EU, and do have nodes world wide at banks but also have secure
connections (VPNs) they do for commercial intersts.
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Re: [Discuss] Are there any SSL certificate authorities that don't cost a king's ransom?

[Jack Coats]

Understood.  But I know they were working to be put into the 'standard'
list of certifiers a few years ago.  I haven't checked recently, but I thought
they made it.  Good try anyway.

On Sun, Jul 28, 2013 at 11:16 AM, Bill Horne  wrote:
> Jack,
>
> I can't use anything that's not /ALREADY/ accepted by default. Thanks for
> your suggestion, but I'm just looking for a lower price.
>
> Bill
>
> On 7/28/2013 11:52 AM, Jack Coats wrote:
>>
>> a lot of folks will laugh or say how 'bad' it is, but cacert.org is a
>> certificate provider ...
>
>
> --
> Bill Horne
> 339-364-8487
>
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Re: [Discuss] Are there any SSL certificate authorities that don't cost a king's ransom?

[Jack Coats]

a lot of folks will laugh or say how 'bad' it is, but cacert.org is a
certificate provider and you can find folks in your area that will (or
at least can) generate one for you.  Ask at BLU, or just search for
folks on cacert.org that can generate certs for you.  You may be
charged to cover their costs, but it should be pretty low.  Without to
much problem you can set up as a cacert member and be able to generate
them yourself.

><> ... Jack
--
Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart... Colossians 3:23
"If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the precipitate"
- Henry J. Tillman
"Anyone who has never made a mistake, has never tried anything new." -
Albert Einstein
"You don't manage people; you manage things. You lead people." -
Admiral Grace Hopper, USN
Life is complex: it has a real part and an imaginary part. - Martin Terma
“Our virtues and our failings are inseparable, like force and matter.
When they separate, man is no more.” - Nikola Tesla
I don't enjoy a massacre of ads.  Hackaday.com says this should
slaughter their existance.


On Sun, Jul 28, 2013 at 10:06 AM, Bill Horne  wrote:
> I'm pricing SSL certificates for my employer: we're talking about putting up
> a "donations" page, and that means using SSL.
>
> Symantec is charging for Beluga caviar and delivering fish eggs: over $700
> per year.
>
> Thawte, their little-known-but-lower-priced subsidiary, wants $200/year, for
> a single domain.
>
> I want to know where I can get one for less. When I look at the list of
> certificates that Firefox came with, I'm sure that there is /someone/,
> /somewhere/, who can sign a certificate without asking my employer to grant
> them an annuity.
>
> I know that there are maybe-yes, maybe-no players in the game, but I can't
> use them. I need a certificate from someone who's already in /EVERY/
> browser: in other words, I can only recommend a purchase from an established
> certificate authority, not someplace who is trying to become one. Having
> said /that/, I'll also say that I don't care if I use a company in South
> Africa or one in Beijing: I only care if the users see a lock icon.
>
> Bill
>
> --
> Bill Horne
> 339-364-8487
>
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Re: [Discuss] Mass Tax on Software Services

[Jack Coats]

I wonder what would be the effect of changing to just take 20% of
every economic exchange?  (or 10%) vs the mish-mash of nickel and dime
taxation that happens.  Get rid of all other taxes.
><> ... Jack
--
Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart... Colossians 3:23
"If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the precipitate"
- Henry J. Tillman
"Anyone who has never made a mistake, has never tried anything new." -
Albert Einstein
"You don't manage people; you manage things. You lead people." -
Admiral Grace Hopper, USN
Life is complex: it has a real part and an imaginary part. - Martin Terma
“Our virtues and our failings are inseparable, like force and matter.
When they separate, man is no more.” - Nikola Tesla
I don't enjoy a massacre of ads.  Hackaday.com says this should
slaughter their existance.


On Mon, Jul 29, 2013 at 4:22 PM, Will Rico  wrote:
> Anyone have thoughts to share on the new Massachusetts tax on software
> services for "prewritten" software consulting or what it covers?
>
> I just came across an article on Slashdot, which links to a blog post
> about this.  Seems like a reason to be alarmed.
>
> Slashdot:
> http://yro.slashdot.org/story/13/07/29/1135234/massachusetts-enacts-625-sales-tax-on-prewritten-software-consulting
>
> Original:
> http://blog.codingoutloud.com/2013/07/28/open-letter-on-new-massachusetts-tax-on-software-services/
>
> Will
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Re: [Discuss] IPv6 for old laserjets?

[Jack Coats]

It looks like there is a JetDirect 625N card available that does both
gigabit and IPV4/6.
It seems to be about $15 on ebay or $180 to $220 new.

Not sure if that card fits the HP LJ 4000

><> ... Jack


On Mon, Jul 15, 2013 at 2:46 PM, John Abreau  wrote:
>
> I have an old HP LaserJet 4000 printer that I bought in 1998, with a 
> JetDirect network card that I bought on eBay in 2002, and it still works 
> great after all these years.
>
> However, it's strictly IPv4, and I'd like to make it IPv6-capable so I won't 
> have to replace it when I eventually switch my home network over to IPv6-only.
>
> Has anyone heard of a way to do this? I imagine the best approach would be 
> for HP to release a newer JetDirect card that works with the 4000 and 
> supports IPv6, but so far I've been unable to find out via google whether 
> such a thing exists.
>
>
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Re: [Discuss] Home Routers

[Jack Coats]

Chris,

I recently upgraded our local router to go along with our new internet
service ( exede satellite service ).  A big upgrade from what we had
before.

About the same time my old reliable WRT56G died.  I tried a Linksys
e2400 that I had at another location for over a year, and it failed
immediately, so I thought about trying a Linksys e3000 (that I have
read good reviews of).

I am a cheap so-and-so, so I got a eBayed Linksys WRT610N that does
well in our application.  Supposedly you can plug a USB drive in it to
do NAS and DLNA, but the reports is that it doesn't do well.  I
haven't even tried.  The 2.4 works well, the 5 is a little weak, but
works.

As part of the upgrade we were able to upgrade from WEP to WPA2 and
that just helps me feel more secure.  Because of where we live (in the
toolies), I am not to worried about being hacked wirelessly, but
still, if security is easy, we do it.

I did spend a few evenings researching what to upgrade and how.  I
also use a couple of wireless bridges and upgraded them to WET610N ..
they have been rock solid, and I do connect those to the router using
5GHz instead of 2.4GHz.  The 2.4 is more used from laptops.
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Re: [Discuss] Filesystem(s) for multi-OS, whole house backup?

[Jack Coats]

I use crashplan, which is a commercial wrapper on rsync with encryption.  I
back it up twice.  One can be taken offsite, and the second is the 'local'
backup, kept online at home.

One of the backups can be removed and taken offsite.  All the backups are
compressed and encrypted before being sent over the network (local or 'open
internet').

Permissions seem to be kept OK, but I am just playing windows & linux.  I
 don't backup OSes, and just user files (docs, pix, text, misc stuff but
not base system).

I have had to do restores on occasion and things have worked well for me.

I have heard of horror stories about folks thinking any of the commercial
backups, including crashplan, will restore 'everything like it was', and
this is not so.  Crashplan has in the last several months had a few reports
of problems with a few files that were backed up being non-re-storable.
 This seems to be due to a corrupted index or datafile.  Normally this self
corrects by requesting the same file be backed up at the next backup
period, but if it IS the only copy, and a restore is requested before the
re-backup is completed, then the issue occurs.

This is why I suggest the 3-2-1-0 plan.  3 copies, on 2 different media, 1
offsite, 0 is the reminder to test restore occasionally.

I do not endorse Crashplan other than being a happy user.  It has holds.
 If Backblaze did Linux, I would probably use it instead.

><> ... Jack
--
Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart... Colossians 3:23
"If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the precipitate" -
Henry J. Tillman
"Anyone who has never made a mistake, has never tried anything new." -
Albert Einstein
"You don't manage people; you manage things. You lead people." - Admiral
Grace Hopper, USN
Life is complex: it has a real part and an imaginary part. - Martin Terma


On Fri, May 3, 2013 at 11:09 AM, Daniel Barrett wrote:

>
> I'm seeking advice on disaster recovery for all the computers in my house
> together (Linux, Windows, Mac), about 3TB of data.  Right now, I back up
> all the computers via rsync each night, pulling the files from all the
> systems into a Linux server that writes them to a USB ext3 hard drive. (I
> can then put the drive into a safety deposit box.) Administratively, it's a
> simple, scalable system controlled by a single computer: there's no
> configuration on the other systems except SSH access. But it's not ideal
> for several reasons:
>
> 1. Restoring the files is not point-and-click: you need Linux knowledge
> (that my family doesn't have). If the computers were lost in a disaster and
> also I died, my family would have a very hard time recovering files from
> this drive. They can't just plug the USB drive into a Mac and recover
> everything.
>
> 2. The backup is missing any extended file attributes from NTFS or Mac OS,
> since the USB drive is ext3.
>
> I'm wondering if other list members have a better solution. I can think of
> several improvements, but I don't know which ones are best (or if there are
> others):
>
> Approach A: "ext3 everywhere." Install software on all Mac systems to read
> ext3, and on all Windows systems to read ext3 and Mac. Now all systems can
> read the backup drive in the event of disaster.
>
> Approach B: "multiple filesystems and writers." Partition the USB drive to
> have NTFS and Mac partitions, and mount it writable on all systems. Have
> the Windows and Mac systems write their own backups to these partitions,
> instead of having backups by "pull" onto the Linux server.  Probably also
> requires Approach A so any computer can read any file.
>
> Approach C: Start investigating systems like Bacula that claim to work on
> all three OSes.  But I don't know if this produces, in the end, a USB drive
> backup that can just be plugged into a Mac for restoral.
>
> I should also mention that this USB drive is not my sole backup system.  We
> also have a NAS that all the systems write to: the Macs use Time Machine
> and the Linux & Windows systems using rsync. However, the NAS is too large
> to keep in a safety deposit box.  I could copy the entire contents of the
> NAS onto a USB drive for safety-deposit-box backup, I suppose.
>
> I'd be grateful for any helpful advice or direction. Thanks.
>
> --
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> dbarr...@blazemonger.com
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Re: [Discuss] Verizon phasing out copper

[Jack Coats]

Yep.  Reminds me of GM 'funding' the removal of local trolley tracks in
cities all over the nation and even some 'intra-urban' rail systems in and
around the 1920s. ... Or the natural gas and electric companies having the
'unsightly' passive copper solar pool heaters removed 'for free' in
southern California around the 1950's.

Basic anti-competitive action using FUD.  Sounds like the computing
industry in the last 30 years.

><> ... Jack
--
Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart... Colossians 3:23
"If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the precipitate" -
Henry J. Tillman
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Albert Einstein
"You don't manage people; you manage things. You lead people." - Admiral
Grace Hopper, USN
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On Wed, May 1, 2013 at 9:48 AM, MC Bouman  wrote:

> Since the cost of labor far exceeds the value of the salvaged material, I
> smell the stench of graft.
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Re: [Discuss] Verizon phasing out copper

[Jack Coats]

Alarm systems that use 'dark copper' or other dedicated circuits might have
an issue.  But I don't know how much that is done anymore anyway.

><> ... Jack
Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart... Colossians 3:23
"If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the precipitate" -
Henry J. Tillman
"Anyone who has never made a mistake, has never tried anything new." -
Albert Einstein
"You don't manage people; you manage things. You lead people." - Admiral
Grace Hopper, USN
Life is complex: it has a real part and an imaginary part. - Martin Terma


On Tue, Apr 30, 2013 at 9:29 PM, Tom Metro  wrote:

> Back when Verizon first rolled out FIOS, the recommendation was that you
> should ask them to leave your copper wiring in place, as it provided a
> few advantages: 1. Verizon was legally obligated to lease access to that
> copper to their competitors, so you could purchase local phone service
> from someone else; and 2. it allowed you to receive battery power from
> the central office to keep your phones running in a power outage.
>
> Today I received a letter from Verizon regarding my residence in Newton
> saying "Verizon is replacing telephone wires and removing obsolete
> equipment to ensure long-term service reliability for our customers. To
> avoid future service interruptions we'll need to move your telephone
> service to our new fiber network. This will be done at no charge to you
> and you will keep the same voice service at the exact same price you're
> paying now."
>
> It seems unlikely they are still motivated by desire to escape sharing
> their copper infrastructure with their competitors. Are there any
> companies left that sell residential local phone service that haven't
> moved on to VoIP? If anything, installing fiber service will only lessen
> barriers to switching to a VoIP competitor.
>
> So the old advice seem to be largely obsolete. (Regarding battery power,
> the ONT has a battery that lasts, I think, 8 hours. If you use a
> cordless phone, and even if you have the base plugged into a UPS (or
> have a rare model with a built-in battery), your phone will likely die
> in less than 8 hours. So practically speaking you aren't really any
> worse off.)
>
> I'd be curious to know what it is costing them to maintain their copper
> plant. It must be a money sink, as they can't have high hopes of
> converting a lot of these copper customers into subscribers of Internet,
> TV, and other higher priced services. (Though undoubtedly some will.)
> Most people still using copper are doing so specifically because they
> don't want, or have no interest in, the other services Verizon offers,
> so slightly reducing the barriers isn't going to turn them into customers.
>
> In fact, you have to wonder how many people faced with setting an
> appointment to have this upgrade performed will say, "Landline? We still
> have one of those? Lets just cancel it."
>
> Anyone else received such a letter? Other than if you're still using
> DSL, any reason to hold on to copper?
>
>  -Tom
>
> --
> Tom Metro
> Venture Logic, Newton, MA, USA
> "Enterprise solutions through open source."
> Professional Profile: http://tmetro.venturelogic.com/
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Re: [Discuss] FOSS email that doesn't suck -- does such a thing exist?

[Jack Coats]

Depending on what you want, pine worked for me for a long time.

If you are finding things hard to do with FOSS, then open your wallet
and pay for the software, unless you are planning on joining one of
the FOSS projects and contributing so it turns into something other
than a 'smolder pile of' whatever.

Enjoy.
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Re: [Discuss] On-site backups revisited - rsnapshot vs. CrashPlan

[Jack Coats]

http://blog.backblaze.com/2013/02/20/180tb-of-good-vibrations-storage-pod-3-0/

A little off topic, but these guys have come out with 3.0 of their
'big NAS server' build.
Storage upgrade is mainly 3T to 4T drives (45 of them), but they do have other
refinements and learnings that have come along with this upgrade they
share in the blog post.

Worth the read for the uber-geeky.
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Re: [Discuss] On-site backups revisited - rsnapshot vs. CrashPlan

[Jack Coats]

I have setup backuppc before.  It works pretty well, and if you use
their dedupe software,
It is basically rsync with a reasonable interface.  Not as easy to
deal with as crashplan, but not bad.

Check out the software here.

 http://backuppc.sourceforge.net/
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Re: [Discuss] [OT] Migrating domain to Google?

[Jack Coats]

I have no clue.  Wife just got a iPhone and is figuring out how to use
it effectively.  She just asked me how to edit a document being
offline, and it is something we don't have answered yet.

><> ... Jack
Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart... Colossians 3:23
"If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the precipitate"
- Henry J. Tillman
"Anyone who has never made a mistake, has never tried anything new." -
Albert Einstein
"You don't manage people; you manage things. You lead people." -
Admiral Grace Hopper, USN
Life is complex: it has a real part and an imaginary part. - Martin Terma


On Thu, Feb 7, 2013 at 7:41 AM, Scott Ehrlich  wrote:
> On Thu, Feb 7, 2013 at 8:19 AM, Jack Coats  wrote:
>> My coats.org domain is mainly at Google.  Our main use is email and I
>> only use 2 or 3 of the 10 userIDs available on the free 'small
>> company' plan.  I think the 'free service' is not an option anymore,
>> but still having a reliable always on email server is nice.
>>
>> Set up the admin information when saying I was going to migrate my
>> domain, they gave me a test-coats-org.google.com or something like
>> that to use till I had the DNS changed on coats.org to re-point to
>> google servers.
>>
>> They provide free tools, but I just logged in, set up pop from my old
>> email provider and sucked my own stuff over on the couple of IDs.  It
>> was pretty easy.  Since it was only 2, my wife and me, it was pretty
>> easy.
>>
>> You can have the test...google.com disabled if you want.
>>
>> Yes, I miss-stepped a couple of times, but it worked pretty well.  I
>> got into this because a friend is the admin at a small college in
>> Nashville TN watkins.edu and they migrated from Exchange to Google not
>> long before the flood a few years ago that wiped out their campus
>> electronic infrastructure. (Their building is in the flood plane for
>> the Cumberland River, and the college is in a re-cycled 1 story tall
>> mall with no basement. And the water got up near the roof line so all
>> electronics were toast.  Migrating to google a few months before for
>> many base functions saved their bacon.  Good backups for 'secure
>> on-site' servers was crucial for them too.  At least they could still
>> do email and docs without interruption throughout the emergency from
>> home or elsewhere.)
>
> I presume the Google Mail App for iDevices works for domains
> transferred to google, too?
>
>>
>>><> ... Jack
>> Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart... Colossians 3:23
>> "If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the precipitate"
>> - Henry J. Tillman
>> "Anyone who has never made a mistake, has never tried anything new." -
>> Albert Einstein
>> "You don't manage people; you manage things. You lead people." -
>> Admiral Grace Hopper, USN
>> Life is complex: it has a real part and an imaginary part. - Martin Terma
>>
>>
>> On Thu, Feb 7, 2013 at 4:35 AM, Scott Ehrlich  wrote:
>>> I am looking at migrating my domain name and my two email boxes from
>>> another provider to google.
>>>
>>> For those who have done it, how difficult was it to have Google import
>>> your old mail from:
>>>
>>> 1: A non google address?
>>>
>>> 2; A @gmail.com address?
>>>
>>>
>>> Keeping people/dates intact of emails and mailbox subfolders on the
>>> google domain side?
>>>
>>> Anything to be careful of?
>>>
>>> Thanks.
>>>
>>> Scott
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Re: [Discuss] [OT] Migrating domain to Google?

[Jack Coats]

My coats.org domain is mainly at Google.  Our main use is email and I
only use 2 or 3 of the 10 userIDs available on the free 'small
company' plan.  I think the 'free service' is not an option anymore,
but still having a reliable always on email server is nice.

Set up the admin information when saying I was going to migrate my
domain, they gave me a test-coats-org.google.com or something like
that to use till I had the DNS changed on coats.org to re-point to
google servers.

They provide free tools, but I just logged in, set up pop from my old
email provider and sucked my own stuff over on the couple of IDs.  It
was pretty easy.  Since it was only 2, my wife and me, it was pretty
easy.

You can have the test...google.com disabled if you want.

Yes, I miss-stepped a couple of times, but it worked pretty well.  I
got into this because a friend is the admin at a small college in
Nashville TN watkins.edu and they migrated from Exchange to Google not
long before the flood a few years ago that wiped out their campus
electronic infrastructure. (Their building is in the flood plane for
the Cumberland River, and the college is in a re-cycled 1 story tall
mall with no basement. And the water got up near the roof line so all
electronics were toast.  Migrating to google a few months before for
many base functions saved their bacon.  Good backups for 'secure
on-site' servers was crucial for them too.  At least they could still
do email and docs without interruption throughout the emergency from
home or elsewhere.)

><> ... Jack
Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart... Colossians 3:23
"If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the precipitate"
- Henry J. Tillman
"Anyone who has never made a mistake, has never tried anything new." -
Albert Einstein
"You don't manage people; you manage things. You lead people." -
Admiral Grace Hopper, USN
Life is complex: it has a real part and an imaginary part. - Martin Terma


On Thu, Feb 7, 2013 at 4:35 AM, Scott Ehrlich  wrote:
> I am looking at migrating my domain name and my two email boxes from
> another provider to google.
>
> For those who have done it, how difficult was it to have Google import
> your old mail from:
>
> 1: A non google address?
>
> 2; A @gmail.com address?
>
>
> Keeping people/dates intact of emails and mailbox subfolders on the
> google domain side?
>
> Anything to be careful of?
>
> Thanks.
>
> Scott
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> Discuss@blu.org
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Re: [Discuss] Ext4, ugh! Re: Disk recovery utilities - dealing with deleted files

[Jack Coats]

Ed, that seems like a better approach for most uses.

I was doing a backup system for an employer, and we had a 'large'
linux server with enough memory, so I used EXT2 for the file system,
because 3 and 4 even more so used more disk space for their cache to
increase performance.  I liked having the extra 10% of space for data.

This is a write mostly file system (backups to disk) and plenty of
memory and CPU horsepower for the job, so EXT2 it was.

This is NOT the correct answer for everyone.  That is why being an
engineer by training and a sysadmin by vocation allows me to get the
projects no one else (in my group) will touch and get them working.

Engineering application specific solutions isn't hard, it is just
tedious and takes lots of testing, weighing alternatives, getting
empirical repeatable results (not just what someone on the 'list says)
makes for a good solution.  Then it has to be documented, and
hopefully include the options and alternatives and WHY a solution was
chosen over others.  The documentation seems to be what falls in the
dirt most often.

Fast, Good, Cheap --- Choose 2.  All 3 is not an option.

><> ... Jack
Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart... Colossians 3:23
"If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the precipitate"
- Henry J. Tillman
"Anyone who has never made a mistake, has never tried anything new." -
Albert Einstein
"You don't manage people; you manage things. You lead people." -
Admiral Grace Hopper, USN
Life is complex: it has a real part and an imaginary part. - Martin Terma


On Tue, Feb 5, 2013 at 7:41 AM, Edward Ned Harvey (blu)
 wrote:
>> From: discuss-bounces+blu=nedharvey@blu.org [mailto:discuss-
>> bounces+blu=nedharvey@blu.org] On Behalf Of Rich Braun
>>
>> It's starting to look to me like the bottom line is this:
>>
>>   DO *NOT* USE EXT4!
>>
>> There are a handful of well-documented utilities available for recovering 
>> ext3
>> volumes, and pretty much nothing for ext4.
>
> Well, ext4 performs so much better.  If the only risk is the lack of 
> availability of undelete tools, then I say, the better solution is to use 
> ext4 and backups.
>
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Re: [Discuss] Disk recovery utilities - dealing with deleted files

[Jack Coats]

> Have you ever been able to get an undelete tool to work?

I have used SpinRite from Gibson Research but it may not do well on
ext* file systems, I haven't tried it with them.

ext2 is the basis for ext3 and ext4 (they both SEEM to must add speed
by cache/logs and disk/cpu overhead) while
keeping the data when written 'where it goes' in ext2 form.  So if the
files have been there for a while, just mounting
it as ext2 might give you a better opportunity for recovery.  But that
is just a guess.

Years ago we could put on/remove a jumper to turn the drive into a R/O
drive, if you can you might do that on this drive before something
accidentally happens to it.

... Jack
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Re: [Discuss] core competency

[Jack Coats]

When I worked for a consulting firm, it was interesting.  Way to often
we were called in to double check on the local people.  Most often the
locals were under appreciated and really sharp in their knowledge
domain.

As consultants we were typically more broadly educated or had very
narrow domain knowledge.

One of the first things I did when I went on a gig after getting
marching orders from the bosses, was to befriend the 'locals' in my
area.  If I was there to solve a problem, I tried to get the local
folks perspective.  Most often they had one or two solutions in mind,
but the bosses either don't trust or don't bother to ask their
'droids'.

Often once we got a problem either resolved or patched, on an exit
interview I tried to stress their high-value employees, and that they
should be the 'first call' when the bosses perceive issues.

I tried to learn something on every gig, and to educate locals
whenever possible to help their continuing job be easier.

I found that most often, the 'help' wasn't needed except in the case
where the staff was very overloaded.  More than once I went to work at
a company to do one thing and got immediately reassigned because one
or two folks quit.

Many employees feel under appreciated, and, not-like HR surveys, are
not properly compensated for their efforts.  When bosses pull in
consultants, the consultant opinion is valued much more highly than
even the same words coming from an employee.  Sometimes I did get the
info from the employees and re-package it for the bosses so the
problem would be solved 'right'.  Yes, I did withhold the idea person
information till the end of the gig.  But it wasn't to enhance my
station, it was to get the ball going, and to eventually get credit to
the employee.  Also, if things go south (like they do on occasion), I
assumed  blame rather than trying to deflect it.  In the long run that
bought me lots of cred from employees and bosses because I would
assume 'blame' even if I obviously didn't do it.  By doing that, I
tried to remove blame as part of a problem resolution cycle, and to
get the end customer issue to a resolution as soon as possible.

Oh well. Enough preaching to the choir.
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Re: [Discuss] Grace Hopper

[Jack Coats]

Yep, Grace Hopper, Nikola Tesla, Rev Dr Robert Stirling
all my techie hero's for various reasons

><> ... Jack
Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart... Colossians 3:23
"If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the precipitate"
- Henry J. Tillman
"Anyone who has never made a mistake, has never tried anything new." -
Albert Einstein
"You don't manage people; you manage things. You lead people." -
Admiral Grace Hopper, USN
Life is complex: it has a real part and an imaginary part. - Martin Terma
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Re: [Discuss] Shutting down Oracle hosted on Linux

[Jack Coats]

Kind of a cheezy answer, but look in /etc/init.d and see if the oracle
script is there.
you might be able to do something like:

  sudo /etc/init.d/oracle stop

to do a graceful shutdown.

><> ... Jack
Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart... Colossians 3:23
"If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the precipitate"
- Henry J. Tillman
"Anyone who has never made a mistake, has never tried anything new." -
Albert Einstein
"You don't manage people; you manage things. You lead people." -
Admiral Grace Hopper, USN
Life is complex: it has a real part and an imaginary part. - Martin Terma


On Fri, Jan 25, 2013 at 10:36 AM, Jerry Feldman  wrote:
> I have an Oracle 11G server on a Linux (RHEL 5.9) virtual machine. It is
> not a heavy production server but is used pretty consistently. Normally
> when I have a scheduled shutdown normally one of our Toronto people
> prefer to shut down the database. Since the Linux shutdown command
> issues a kill -TERM on all processes is it really necessary to do the
> Oracle shutdown prior to the Linux shutdown.
>
> (I'm a bit gun shy because the last time I issued an Oracle shutdown the
> database got corrupted, but it probably was not my fault).
>
> I have DBA privs on the database, but our DBAs are in Toronto and they
> are no longer allowed to work on servers in the US.
>
> --
> Jerry Feldman 
> Boston Linux and Unix
> PGP key id:3BC1EB90
> PGP Key fingerprint: 49E2 C52A FC5A A31F 8D66  C0AF 7CEA 30FC 3BC1 EB90
>
>
>
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Re: [Discuss] core competency

[Jack Coats]

I have worked in some companies where, when getting ready for a major
upgrade, they
hired contractors.  To do the 'support and maintenance' of the 'old
stuff' whey the employees
do the new development, and when they are ready, they roll into
production and become
the support staff.  When the old stuff is after EOL, the contractors
are thanked and escorted
out - no harm, no foul.

I found this to be a good model. ... It keeps permanent folks on your
bleeding edge, they
know they will have to support tomorrow what they did today, so 'good
enough' should not
be 'good enough' for them.  Their new system needs to be right day one.

I have run into several contractors over the year that just wanted to
bill the next hour
rather than supply the service needed by the customer to solve the
customers issues
long term.  Kind of having the dog protect the steak issue.

Contractors, especially good ones, always have had a warm place in my
heart.  I have done
that, but the non-contract life is more my speed.  But so is
retirement now that I put in my years.

><> ... Jack
Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart... Colossians 3:23
"If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the precipitate"
- Henry J. Tillman
"Anyone who has never made a mistake, has never tried anything new." -
Albert Einstein
"You don't manage people; you manage things. You lead people." -
Admiral Grace Hopper, USN
Life is complex: it has a real part and an imaginary part. - Martin Terma


On Fri, Jan 25, 2013 at 9:29 AM, Jerry Feldman  wrote:
> On 01/24/2013 12:38 PM, Shirley Márquez Dúlcey wrote:
>>> Of course, when you outsource for expertise, you're really outsourcing to 
>>> save money.  Because you get somebody part-time or temporary instead of 
>>> hiring a fulltime person for that role.  At least ... I find in sales for 
>>> my own services, that's one of the most compelling points to pitch to 
>>> potential customers.
>> That assumes that your company needs enough of that role to justify a
>> full time person. A common reason for outsourcing is that a company
>> only needs a small amount of a skill, not enough to justify bringing
>> in a person for it.
> I filled that role as a contractor for about 20 years.  Generally
> projects have life cycles that require staffing up and staffing down.
> So, you buy those skills for the period of time you are developing the
> product. You develop the inhouse skills to maintain the product going
> forward.
>
> --
> Jerry Feldman 
> Boston Linux and Unix
> PGP key id:3BC1EB90
> PGP Key fingerprint: 49E2 C52A FC5A A31F 8D66  C0AF 7CEA 30FC 3BC1 EB90
>
>
>
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Re: [Discuss] restoring Windows on different hardware

[Jack Coats]

My relationship goes back to the 'Open Letter To Hobbiests'
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Letter_to_Hobbyists
Well, you can read that for the details, but it just ticked off the
hobbiest computer community and only made his stuff
spread faster.  And M$ and 'others' have had a loathe-hate
relationship ever since.
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Re: [Discuss] How do Linux guys back up Windows?

[Jack Coats]

VM370 was pretty good.  Of course it was not built as an OS but as a
hardware emulator.  (IBM initially built it because they couldn't afford a
mainframe for every development group, hardware and software, to use.)

I was a sysprog for several years at a big company where we had thousands
of users logged in and mainly active running anything from CMS to MVS under
VM. (CMS was a single user simple OS that most interactive users used.  We
often ran entire VM systems second level to do production work especially
for disaster recovery testing, testing new releases of VM or other systems,
or on rare occasion for better computing security.

VM took about 5% of the hardware 'bandwidth' to run the VM.  But like was
mentioned it was very efficient at virtual memory.  To test, the most VM I
ran under VM was 6 levels deep.  Even with a nice size mainframe, it was
terribly slow at that many levels of VM running under each other.

But like was mentioned for VS1, most OSes could detect that they were
running 'second level' (or further) and passed back up to the top level VM
to actually handle the paging/swapping (and there was a difference back
then).

VMs were not new with IBM either. I think it was Burroughs that used them
and published on it way before IBMs VM came about.

Oh, and to let the secret out, the way IBM did VM was to use a 'diagnose'
instruction which was officially an un-authorized machine language
instruction so it generated an interrupt and an interrupt service routine
took over (just like would happen when there was a I/O operation end or a
hardware timer go off, or violating virtual memory boundries).  The
interrupt service routing looked at the instruction and the byte or two
after it in the 'user memory' to determine if it was a 'real diagnose' or
'a user problem', and took appropriate action.  The diagnose was initially
an instruction used by the IBM CE (customer engineer) in their hardware
diagnostic programs, but the software guys got in on the act too.

Oh on each mainframe we typically ran around 2000 CMS users and a MVS or
two for batch or to take care of SNA networking.  RSCS was another virtual
system that ran the network communications.  VM did it's own spooling and
driving of printers and such directly, but it could let guest operating
systems like MVS or VS1 deal with it too.

And yes, we had a source code license, and we did no occasion read the
source code. There were many places in the source that the documentation
was not 'kept up' or did not describe what the code really did, so we still
had to be able to read the assembler.  Most of VM had been rewritten from
assembler to SPL (System Programming Language, similar to PL/1) by the time
I got into the arena in the early to mid 80's.

My first UNIX was running Amdahl's UTS under VM.  A different animal when
working on block mode terminals.  We did bring up UTS on first level a time
or two for play, and it did scream.  In those years we did a lot of seismic
processing on Perkin-Elmer machines (small IBM 360 type clones), and they
ran their own unix-like system but with a more MVS style JES JCL (job
control language) flavor.

One consultant we had on VM over the years was on the initial HASP
development team in Clear Lake City at NASA.  NASA had a lot of big iron
mainframes in those days, but even their budget couldn't support what IBM
told them they needed, so NASA said they needed a way to share input and
output peripherals (mainly card readers and line printers in those days),
so IBM put together a small team to make it happen.  In just a few months
they did come out with the first cut of HASP (Houston Automatic Spooling
Program).  It basically ran all the cards to disk, then fed them to
computers (not just 1) on demand.  And took the 'printer output' as
generated on each computer and saved it to disk till the job on the other
computer was done, then put it in a print queue.  Saved a lot of hardware
and IBMs collective butt at NASA.  IBM was almost thrown out over it, but
HASP saved the day, and went on to be a big cash cow and saved mainframes
for many years.  It eventually was 'virtualized' and rolled into the basics
of JES in its flavors (Job Entry System that also handled spooling
printouts, and job control networking).

Ahh, memories.
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Re: [Discuss] How do Linux guys back up Windows?

[Jack Coats]

>From my experience there are really different backup needs.

1) awe-shucks - restore files quickly.  Crashplan and TSM as well as many
others are good at this.  It is NOT an image backup typically (though TSM
with some addins can do just about 'anything', IMHO).  This is what most of
the world needs.  I use it to back up what is 'important' to me and my
family.  Doc's, pix, but not normally the software and not the OS.

2) image restores - yep, put a while system back as it was at a point in
time.  Typically block or larger level of storage backups.  Sometimes it
can be useful for doing the file level 'awe shucks' restore,  but depending
on implementation it is a pain.

3) my data center burned down restores - this is often a duplicate of both
the previous  backups, and stored at 'grandma's house', in a safe deposit
box, or 'Iron Mountain' or a friends house across town or another state.
 You do effectively image backups, and keep a copy and send a copy
'offsite', and the same with file level incremental s   IBMs TSM with DRM
(Disaster Recovery Manager) or whatever they are calling it as IBM
marketing changes the name every few years, effectively does this.  --
 This is the level of restores I have used for disaster recovery testing
that larger or audited companies tend to do every 3 to 6 months.
 Expensive, time consuming, a real pain, and it is the 'only' way to ensure
things work and keep working, IMHO. -- yes I have failed, but also made it
work when others say it 'can't', but so life goes.

4) database - whether SQL language data bases or a hierarchical database,
or even specialty backups like M$ Exchange, basically takes quiesing the
database, and back up the quiescenced files.  Several SQL implementations
have been SQL DBA's do a  back up to flat files under their control (so
they are responsible for getting SQL going again if I put the flat files
back) or using snapshots and backing up the snapshot made while the
database is quiescenced.   There are ways to backup
non-quiescenced databases, but it is normally more of a pain, but often
takes less 'scratch' space.

Backups are a non-glory job.  They are more like selling insurance, no one
wants to pay for it until after it is needed.

Enough pontificating.  Where is that pumpkin pie?
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Re: [Discuss] How do Linux guys back up Windows?

[Jack Coats]

On Thu, Dec 27, 2012 at 8:45 AM, Mark Woodward  wrote:

> A little humor
>
> Q: How do Linux guys back up Windows?
> A: Real Linux guys install Linux over Windows.
>
>
Yep, but when the significant or the 'paycheck sponsor' other doesn't want
to go there, you just make it work somehow.

I did backups for a number of years.  Mainly IBM's TSM on Linux, AIX,
Solaris, and various M$ versions.  The basic scenario for M$Win restore was
to install a very minimal install into a non-/Windows directory.  Add the
TSM client.  Restore everything, then reboot.  It basically came back as
the 'old machine', then erase the non-/Windows directory you put stuff in,
and you are 'production ready'.  Yes there were more details, but not much.
 BackupExec is basically the same (mainly Windows).

I had one Solaris customer that was uber-tied to various library versions
that didn't want the system updated to new versions of libraries, so they
were a pain.  I am sure it was best for them that they moved on to another
provider under their own power.

Image versions of restores work.  Don't quite know why but I had problems
with them in production environments.  I am sure it was something that
never sunk into my hard head.

... Live is easier being retired. ... Not getting 3AM customer calls is
very nice (I got those while working for Oil companies, banks, ISP's, etc
over the years - somehow 3AM was the witching hour).

Enjoy your Christmas break! ... Jack
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Re: [Discuss] How do Linux guys back up Windows?

[Jack Coats]

go to Crashplan.com and download the windows version.  You can also snag a
Linux, solaris versions if you need it.

You don't have to use their service, but it isn't that expensive. the
software is free.

I backup windows and linux to another machine (linux in this case) on my
network, and the ones that I really
care about both locally and to the 'cloud'.

Easy Peasy.

><> ... Jack
Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart... Colossians 3:23
"If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the precipitate" -
Henry J. Tillman
"Anyone who has never made a mistake, has never tried anything new." -
Albert Einstein
"You don't manage people; you manage things. You lead people." — Admiral
Grace Hopper, USN


On Wed, Dec 26, 2012 at 6:43 PM, David Kramer  wrote:

> I am now in the odd situation of having two computers that are dual
> boot, and that I use under Windows more than I have in the past (which
> is to say a couple of times a YEAR).
>
> Under Linux, I know that I can always reinstall the OS without hassles
> and the update it, so I usually use scripts to just back up the
> configuration files and documents and mail, etc.  A big server takes in
> the neighborhood of 17GB to back up this way, which is great.  Windows,
> on the other hand, is more than a collection of files.  It has magical
> things in special places, and a registry that Must Be Right.  It also
> can't be taken as a given that if my system dies, and I need to (say)
> replace a hard drive, that I'll be able to use install media to
> reinstall the OS.
>
> My normal MO is to back up to external USB hard drives that are normally
> disconnected and sitting in a drawer.  In preparation for this I bought
> a 1TB one to supplement my current 500GB one.  I'm thinking I'll use the
> 1TB one for Linux and the 500GB one for the two Windows instances.  I'm
> not sure if that will be enough, though.  I did a test Windows Backup on
> my desktop Windows instance and it took about 180MB, which was a pretty
> big surprise.  I later learned it does diffs after that so it shouldn't
> grow very fast.  Still I don't know if 500GB will be big enough for
> both.  Maybe I can switch to a program that stores backups compressed,
> since I'm not really worried about speed.
>
> Let's say I already have my personal documents backed up through
> synchronization, but I would like to not have to reinstall all my apps,
> especially Office.  Given all that, how would you recommend I back up?
> Are there any good (free|cheap) programs that will back up Windows to
> external hard drives?
>
> Thanks.  I know this isn't really about Windows, but I know a lot of you
> are SysAdmins that work with both.  I also wanted a Linux perspective on
> this, because a lot of the Windows-only SysAdmins I've spoken to left me
> with the impression that they don't think about it very much and just do
> what they're told by Microsoft.
>
>
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Re: [Discuss] [Slightly OT] Streaming video services?

[Jack Coats]

Another iron in the fire is Amazon.  If you have amazon prime, there
are some video's you can see for no additional charge.  And if you
purchase them, they stay available for your future viewing.

My (low) bandwidth connection does not allow viewing Amazon, but I can
see Hulu and Netflix if I set them to lowest available resolution.  On
my linux laptop Hulu works well, and Netflix on my TV (via Sony
blue-ray player).  The TV service for Hulu is the + service that I
don't pay for.

><> ... Jack


On Thu, Nov 29, 2012 at 9:04 AM, Scott Ehrlich  wrote:
>
> We have discovered, through various FIOS promotions, that the premium
> services, such as HBO, Showtime, etc, simply don't offer us enough to
> actually subscribe to them.
>
> So, we have streaming services - Amazon, Hulu, Blockbuster, Netflix,
> Redbox is evolving, among others.   Their average price is $8/month,
> which is fine with us.
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