Re: [PLUG] Snappy response not so snappy anymore

[Robert Munro]

On Thu, 5 May 2016 15:52:04 Dick Steffens wrote:
> On 05/05/2016 10:10 AM, Neal wrote:

>>> Do you have a tool that can show how busy the hard drive is
>>> during the seconds the system is waking up? (Is there even such a
>>> tool?)
> I haven't found one, but I got caught up in work.
> 

The package gkrellm is what you want for a compact visual performance
monitor. It should be available in your distribution repositories, and
takes just a minute to install and set up. I keep an instance running
all the time in a vertical one inch wide strip on the left side of one
virtual desktop, which also features a console tracking log messages.
You can run top in another session to see what's using cpu, and so on.

Regards,
Robert









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Re: [PLUG] websites that seem to take over the machine

[Robert Munro]

Thanks to all for suggesting ublock origin, noscript and ghostery, all
of which I've just added to Firefox ESR 38.3 and am happy with so far.

Other Firefox extensions I've installed are Google Disconnect, Facebook
Disconnect and Twitter Disconnect. Those might be redundant now, maybe,
but I found them helpful and easy to use, though minimally informative.
I mention those as a less draconian approach than the full-on blockers.




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[PLUG] Snowden interview

[Robert Munro]

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James Bamford's article on his interview with Edward Snowden at Wired
is well worth reading, in case anyone on the PLUG list hasn't seen it.

http://www.wired.com/2014/08/edward-snowden/

"The question is, what are we going to do about it?"

Indeed.

R

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Re: [PLUG] Need a new laptop

[Robert Munro]

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> On Mon, 12 May 2014, Rich Shepard wrote:
> 
>> On Mon, 12 May 2014, Paul Heinlein wrote:
>> 
>>> On Mon, 12 May 2014, Rich Shepard wrote:
>>> 
 On Mon, 12 May 2014, Denis Heidtmann wrote:
 
>>> Not everybody agrees with us.  My son types a lot, and
>>> likes the new keys. He likes the very short travel. I
>>> suffer errors due to the short travel. Since these new
>>> keys are becoming dominant, I expect that the young
>>> turks driving the market have the fine motor skills to
>>> benefit. The pain of being in the minority!
> 
> Or, it's that they grew up pressing specific areas on a
> flat screen such as those on 'smart' phones and tablet
> computers and have no experience with an actual computer
> keyboard or typewriter.
>>> 
>> I grew up on typewriters and IBM-esque keyboards, and I love the
>>  short-throw chiclet keyboards. I'd never willingly go back.
> 
> It's great when each of us has the choice of preferred hardware,
> but we don't always have that choice.

I learned to type at Benson HS, but I didn't learn to keyboard well
until I had to use an IBM 029 keypunch machine. Having to redo whole
cards for single character keypunch errors taught me to be accurate.

Then I used teletype terminals for a couple of years. I spent years
using dumb terminals hooked to IBM mainframes, and those had better
keyboards even though they only worked in uppercase. When the IBM PC
came out its keyboard was much like any mainframe terminal keyboard,
except that it used ASCII not EBCDIC and had lowercase letters, too.

When so-called 'portable' PCs came along I bought one, and used that
for a couple of years until the IT management consulting firm that I
worked for bought everyone notebook PCs. I didn't build a desktop PC
until the mid-90s, but it was so nice to have a real keyboard again.

Now I have a Thinkpad for backup, but I prefer a full-size keyboard.

* * *

As this thread suggests, some people care a lot about their keyboard
preferences and take care to find what pleases them, especially when
choosing a laptop or notebook, if they can't put up with the hassles
involved in lugging around an external keyboard. Others don't really
know what they prefer or don't care enough to make it a priority, so
they end up struggling with keyboards that don't actually suit them.

Unfortunately, I can think of a few former and present colleagues in
this category, as is readily apparent when they are chatting online.
Either that, or they are such sloppy typists that they look retarded
(no offense to the disabled intended). Still others adjust or evolve
their keyboarding skills to use whatever they have to work with well
enough to remain reasonably proficient no matter what that might be.

Most people probably fall in this category given time and necessity,
but of course it's always easier to use a keyboard that pleases you.

How nice it would be if some laptop OEM would offer keyboard choices
like scalloped versus flat keys and solid or light touch key travel,
independent of specifications such as display size, processor speed,
graphics chip, amount of memory and hard disk versus SSD, and so on.

Lenovo has the engineering chops and market share to do this, and so
does HP. But no, instead they focus on filling every marketing niche
with completely different model lines over-engineered to perfection.

* * *

(These nested PLUG mailing list quotes often remind me of the writer
John Barth and his uproariously amusing Menelaiad that he would read,
with slides illustrating those storytelling gymnastics, decades ago.

As one writer noted, "Barth has a field day letting Menelaus tell the
tale of conversations with different people at different times []

“”””This is frustrating! he said, she recounted, he told me, I say."

I saw him present that, and by the time he got a few levels deep
people started chuckling. At six levels of quotes, he brought the
house down.)

Robert

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Re: [PLUG] Alternatives to Firefox & Thunderbird

[Robert Munro]

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On Fri, 04 Apr 2014 14:31:53 -0700 Russell Senior wrote:
> 
> I think this is excellent fodder for plug-talk.  Not really for
> plug-general.

Yes, that's where non-technical discussions like those that address
political beliefs belong. However, if motivations are left aside it
should be appropriate to discuss alternative web browsers and email
clients here, regardless of reasons for seeking those alternatives.

In case anyone missed it yesterday, however, the situation has been
resolved. Mozilla is the same organization it was before this issue
came up, although it is now looking for another CEO. Mitchell Baker
directs Mozilla as executive chair anyway, and that hasn't changed.

For those who are still interested, there's commentary in the press
about this episode almost everywhere now, including in the LA Times.

I will stick with using Firefox and Thunderbird, though, and Mozilla
could be run by space aliens for all I care, as long as its software
remains reliable.

I do wish Mozilla would make it easier to directly access local mail
files in Thunderbird like Evolution does, because it's ridiculous to
have to run Dovecot merely to pick up chron job output sent to root.

Robert

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Re: [PLUG] resizing log file viewer in Ubuntu 12.04

[Robert Munro]

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On Sat, 22 Mar 2014 19:02:01 -0700 Denis Heidtmann wrote:
> 
> Unity offers a log file viewer.  It comes up with a window with a
> vertical size larger than my screen.  The context menu has a resize
> option, but it does not provide access to the bottom of the window.
> Google has not helped.  Ideas?

Does the Unity log file viewer offer more features than simply opening
a terminal and using the tail or less command?

tail -f /var/log/messages # is a rolling real-time display of the log.

less /var/log/messages # lets you scroll the whole system messages log.

I don't know whether Ubuntu uses systemd (though I suspect it
doesn't), but systemd has added log journaling and a new command,
journalctl.

HTH,
Robert
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Re: [PLUG] Using a SSD

[Robert Munro]

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On Thu, 9 Jan 2014 14:36:58 -0800 (PST) Rich Shepard wrote:
> 
> I'm finishing (finally) assembly of a new server/workstation. It
> has a 60G SSD drive as /dev/sda and a 750G mechanical hard drive as
> /dev/sdb. I'm collecting opinions on what partitions to mount on
> the SSD. So far I've received a few on linuxquestions.org and would
> like the thoughts of folks here.
> 
> The current partioning (which I've used for years) is:
> 
> /dev/sda3swap /dev/sda1/ /dev/sda2/boot 
> /dev/sda5/home /dev/sda6/usr /dev/sda7/opt
>  /dev/sda8/var /dev/sda9/tmp
> 

You can avoid having a separate /opt partition by pointing it to
/usr/local.

When setting this up, as root,

cd /
ls -al /opt   # make sure it's not present or empty
rmdir /opt# if it's present but empty, delete it

ln -s /usr/local /opt # link /opt to /usr/local

The only thing I have in /opt is Google Earth, and it works.

HTH,
Robert


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Re: [PLUG] Can one add an OS on a second drive to GRUB[?]

[Robert Munro]

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On Tue, 12 Feb 2013 09:32:24 Richard C. Steffens wrote:
> 
> 
> Is it possible to have both drives plugged in at the same time and
> have GRUB give me the option of which of the three OS's to boot?
> 

The short answer is, Yes. The slightly longer answer is, it is
complex, but the fact that both drives are SATA drives makes it
straightforward, more or less depending on how your motherboard BIOS
assigns the drives.

You can add an entry to /boot/grub/menu.lst on your primary hard
drive, pointing to the alternative OS on your secondary hard drive.

Hint: Code the root(hd?,?) and configfile /boot/grub/menu.lst entries.

The good news is that you can play around to make this work as long as
you don't change more than one thing at a time and test it thoroughly.

If you get carried away with wanting to boot multiple systems, on more
than two drives, perhaps including both SATA and SCSI disks, you might
need a rescue Live CD to straighten things out after you screw them up.

I've been there, done that. I revisit it about once a year when I take
the time to install new releases, having forgotten how much pain it is
in the meantime. I've slowed down and one of these years I might learn.

I have four hard drives in my desktop system, two 80GB SATA drives and
two 9GB SCSI drives, and have a different system on each one of these.
In addition, I use logical partitions for all of these systems. You do
not want to see the GRUB menu.lst files for this awkward configuration.

HTH,
Robert

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Re: [PLUG] Chrome vs. Chromium: Which is the Web Browser and Which the OS?

[Robert Munro]

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On Tue, 1 Jan 2013 10:33:01 Rich Shepard wrote:

> 
> libflashplayer.so is in ~/.mozilla/firefox/plugins/ and /usr/lib64/
> but not being seen. Javascript is enabled in firefox.
> 

I'm running Firefox 10.0.11 ESR under 64-bit Mageia now, but used to
have Firefox 15 and here's how I had flashplayer set up to work then.

In your /home/[usrid] directory you'll have ./.mozilla/firefox and...
under that you'll have a [random].default directory where all firefox
user files live.

Create /home/[userid]/.mozilla/firefox/[random].default/plugins and a
soft link in that: libflashplayer.so -> /usr/lib64/libflashplayer.so .

That worked for me, but as always YMMV.
Robert

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Re: [PLUG] Can't Receive Mail

[Robert Munro]

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On Sun, 02 Dec 2012 13:15:01 Bill Thoen wrote:
> On 01-Dec-12 12:30 PM, James Bertelson wrote:
>>> On Sat, Dec 1, 2012 at 10:26 AM, Bill Thoen
>>> wrote:
> Hello folks,
> 
> I'm setting up a new CentOS 64-bit machine and have nearly
> got mail working, except I can't send mail to myself from
> outside the LAN it's on. When I try I get this error
> message:
> 
> "An error occurred while sending mail. The mail server
> responded:  5.1.1 : Recipient
> address rejected: User unknown in virtual alias table.
> Please check the message recipient bth...@visualfarms.com
> and try again."
> 
> I can send mail from that address, no problem. I'm using
> the latest Dovecot and Postfix. I've tried setting an alias
> in etc/aliases like so: bthoen: bth...@visualfarms.com
> 
> and pointing local_recipient_maps in main.cf at it. I also
> tried leaving that empty. Also did 'service postfix
> restart' and 'service dovecot restart' whenever I disturbed
> their config files.
> 
> The log says that dovecot connects and disconnects OK, but
> I'm so new to this end of the business that I probably
> don't see half of what I should notice. Here's the last few
> log entries as I tried to login via Thunderbird:
> 
> Dec  1 10:16:02 oneimage dovecot: IMAP(bthoen):
> Disconnected: Logged out Dec  1 10:51:48 oneimage dovecot:
> imap-login: Login: user=, method=PLAIN,
> rip=:::72.251.11.78, lip=:::192.231.196.244, TLS 
> Dec  1 10:51:48 oneimage dovecot: IMAP(bthoen): Effective
> uid=500, gid=500, home=/home/bthoen Dec  1 10:51:48
> oneimage dovecot: IMAP(bthoen): maildir: 
> data=/home/bthoen/Maildir Dec  1 10:51:48 oneimage dovecot:
> IMAP(bthoen): maildir: root=/home/bthoen/Maildir,
> index=/home/bthoen/Maildir, control=, inbox=
> 
> I've read lots of article on Dovecot, Postfix and related
> from Googlets -- not understanding a lot of it. And I don't
> know what would be relevant to display here for help. This
> is probably dead simple to an experienced sysadmin, but my
> experienced SA got a real job in another state and is no
> longer as free to freelance as before. So I have to learn
> enough to make this work in the short term, and hopefully
> more will sink in in the long run.
> 
> Any help, references to articles, or requests for some
> information to diagnose what's wrong would be much
> appreciated.
> 
> TIA, Bill Thoen
>>> Bill,
>>> 
>>> It sounds like Postfix doesn't know it's supposed to accept
>>> mail for your domain.  Make sure that visualfarms.com is in the
>>> mydestination= line in main.cf and restart the service if you
>>> have to add it. If that doesn't work, it might be helpful to
>>> see the whole main.cf (you can obfuscate anything you don't
>>> want to share, though I can't think of anything in there that
>>> would be sensitive.)
> Sorry, I tried to send the main.cf file yesterday, but it exceeds
> this forum's limits for a single message. So I'm posting main.cf
> with only the settings as I have them. This is followed by a more
> precise log of events. I'll start looking into Postfix  a little
> more carefullly and see if I can spot (and recognize) the error.
> But Postfix must be working somewhat at least because messaghes
> sent locally do get delivered correctly. I still need some help.
> 
> *main.cf reduced in size by removing excess comments:*



> If I'm logged on locally, it works perfectly. * Dec  2 12:54:53
> oneimage postfix/pickup[2374]: 5562577F80A2: uid=500 from= 
> Dec  2 12:54:53 oneimage postfix/cleanup[2423]: 5562577F80A2: 
> message-id=<20121202195453.5562577f8...@mail.visualfarms.com> Dec
> 2 12:54:53 oneimage postfix/qmgr[23504]: 5562577F80A2: 
> from=, size=331, nrcpt=1 (queue active) Dec
> 2 12:54:53 oneimage postfix/local[2425]: 5562577F80A2: 
> to=, relay=local, delay=0.04, 
> delays=0.02/0.01/0/0, dsn=2.0.0, status=sent (delivered to
> mailbox) Dec  2 12:54:53 oneimage postfix/qmgr[23504]:
> 5562577F80A2: removed
> 
> *When I try to send myself a message from a machine on a different
>  network, it doesn't know me.* Dec  2 12:37:15 www
> postfix/smtpd[29287]: Anonymous TLS connection established from
> node63. 8.251.72.1dial.com[72.251.8.63]: TLSv1 with cipher 
> DHE-RSA-CAMELLIA256-SHA (256/256 bits) Dec  2 12:37:17 www
> postfix/smtpd[29287]: NOQUEUE: reject: RCPT from 
> node63.8.251.72.1dial. com[72.251.8.63]: 550 5.1.1
> : Recipient address rejected: User unkn own
> in virtual alias table; from= 
> to= proto=ESMT P helo=<[72.251.8.63]> Dec
> 2 12:37:40 www postfix/smtpd[29287]: disconnect from 
> node63.8.251.72.1dial.com[72.251. 8.63]

Did you run the newaliases command after you updated main.cf?  I
didn't see that in the thread, and it is needed after updating Postfix
aliases.

HTH,
Robert
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Re: [PLUG] would this laptop work?

[Robert Munro]

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On Sun, 7 Oct 2012 11:43:31 -0700 Randy Stapilus wrote:
> 
> I'm looking at getting a new (nearly new in this case) laptop on
> which I would dual boot Windows (probably not often) and Linux,
> probably either Ubuntu or Mint.
> 
> A friend has a machine up for sale which looks like a good deal and
> I think might work for me. It's an HP Pavillion dv7 (descriptive 
> page).
>
>  The specs suggest to me this seems like a reasonable machine for
> what I want. Question - anyone know of a problem area here, a
> reason dual-booting wouldn't work smoothly enough with this
> particular laptop?

There's an easy way to find out. Get a Live CD for Ubuntu and boot it.
See http://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop .

If it detects everything (the GPU, ethernet port, wireless chipset and
power controller, primarily) and boots successfully, then it will
work. You should check that everything (LAN, wireless, suspend/resume)
works.

This laptop has a Nvidia GT650M GPU so getting the custom video driver
installed might require work if Ubuntu doesn't load that
automatically, but if the free Nvidia video driver works maybe that
might satisfy you.

Buying a new or used laptop always presents a set of tradeoffs, mostly
related to desired specifications versus price. You don't say how much
your friend wants for this machine, but various HP Pavilion dv7 models
are going for anywhere between $200 to $500 or more on eBay right now.
You might look at eBay listings and check those with comparable specs.

Whether a particular laptop is right for you depends on how you'll use
it and is largely a matter of taste. This is a 17in notebook, so it is
more of a 'desknote' than a road warrior's machine, but if you are not
planning to travel with it a lot, that might not matter to you at all.
On the other hand, if you are always on the road you might soon regret
buying such a large notebook that doesn't fit on airplane tray tables.

It also has a 1920x1080 resolution, 16:9 aspect ratio screen, which is
all too common, but is more suited to viewing media than creative
work. I think that a 1600x1200 resolution, 4:3 aspect ratio screen is
better for writing and viewing webpages because it doesn't force you
to do as much scrolling, but that's a matter of what you are
comfortable using.

HP's customer service and technical support reputation has declined in
recent years due to extensive layoffs and outsourcing, so there's that
to consider, too. Will you be able to get an original purchase receipt
to back up any warranty claim? Is the HP warranty transferable to you?

You might ask a local laptop repair shop about HP notebook reliability
and ease of repair in recent models. I'd rather buy a Lenovo Thinkpad,
because those are well built and almost bulletproof if not mistreated.

Those are some things to think about. I hope that helps. Best of luck!

Robert
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Re: [PLUG] Question on efficiently searching large files for a simple text match

[Robert Munro]

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On Sat, 29 Sep 2012 19:36:36 -0700 Eric Wilhelm wrote:
> # from website reader on Saturday 29 September 2012:
>>> I have a list of about 2 to 5 thousand items ...

> If you don't know Perl, I think this is a really good time to read
> the `man perlintro` document.

I suspect that Randall Schwartz has just encountered the downside of
posting at PLUG using an alias that hides his identity.

R

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Re: [PLUG] Where a program stores temporary files

[Robert Munro]

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On Thu, 2 Aug 2012 07:05:36 -0700 wes  wrote:
>>> 
>>> Or isn't possible that it is still on the disk temporarily?

> while this is true, it does not particularly impact the specific
> scenario laid out by the original poster.

> If the data were extraordinarily sensitive, or if there was a
> serious threat of compromise, we could be more aggressive about
> wiping the data away. Even after the last process to hold an open
> file handle on a file closes that handle, the data is still on the
> disk until that spot on the disk has new data written to it by some
> future process.

True, once you've deleted the target file, you can make certain it's
no longer recoverable by using scrub or another disk wiping package. I
use scrub v2.2 occasionally on my /home partition to obliterate all
deleted files with a one-line script called scrubit, as follows:

#!/bin/sh
scrub -XS /home/scratch && rm -rf /home/scratch && exit 0

It writes random data over all free space on my /home partition, in
two passes I think, then one pass of binary zeros followed by a verify
pass.

You can also set up /tmp as a ramdisk in /etc/fstab using the line:

none /tmp tmpfs defaults 0 0

That will rebuild /tmp in memory at every reboot, for those who reboot.

And if you're leery of Adobe Flash Player, you can clear that out, too:

cd ~
rm -rf ./.adobe/Flash_Player/AssetCache/*
rm -rf ./.macromedia/Flash_Player/#SharedObjects/*

HTH,
Robert

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Re: [PLUG] UEFI and Secure Boot (was ALERT: July 5th speaker cancellation...)

[Robert Munro]

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On Tue, 03 Jul 2012 10:54:16 -0700 Michael Dexter wrote:
> On 6/28/12 2:47 PM, John Jason Jordan wrote:
>>> I still want very much to hear about UEFI. Alas, I know nothing
>>> about it.
> I found this in my inbox today:
> 
> UEFI and Secure Boot No Free Boots
> 
> The imminent Windows 8 implementation of UEFI with Secure Boot adds
> an extra layer of complexity for some Linux users. We look at the
> problem and two solutions from Fedora and Canonical.
> 
> http://linux-magazine.us2.list-manage2.com/track/click?u=1c76cb37f73773b4962ae429b&id=cd172065b0&e=2bde0f9ae5
>
> 
The FSF has written an uncompromising white paper on this topic. PJ
has highlighted and reproduced it at Groklaw:

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=2012070213044413 .

It is also, of course, available at the FSF in both HTML and PDF format:

https://www.fsf.org/campaigns/secure-boot-vs-restricted-boot/whitepaper-web


and

https://www.fsf.org/campaigns/secure-boot-vs-restricted-boot/whitepaper.pdf
.

It's not light reading, but the danger to Linux users seems to be real.

Regards,
Robert





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Re: [PLUG] Video Jitters

[Robert Munro]

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On Fri, 06 Apr 2012 09:17:15 -0700 "Richard C. Steffens" wrote:
> 
> 
> So, does this sound like a fixable thing?
> 
> Does it sound like a relatively inexpensive fix?
> 
> Any recommended monitor service shops?

This comes up here from time to time. A couple of years ago I called
around and found a guy that can at times repair old failing monitors.

He replaced some caps in a 19" Hitachi 751 CRT monitor for $50 and it
has been working great ever since. He even picked up and returned it.

Another old monitor I'd got at Free Geek for $20 he could not repair,
he said, but he didn't charge me anything to look at it and I let him
keep it for parts.

I cannot read his handwritten name on an old receipt, but his phone
number was 503-860-8268. If you call him, tell him I sent you. YMMV.

Good luck!
Robert
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Re: [PLUG] fat 16 or 32?

[Robert Munro]

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On Fri, 23 Mar 2012 09:36:09 -0700 Galen Seitz wrote:
> On 03/23/12 08:52, Denis Heidtmann wrote:

>> 
>> This is very confusing to me.  When I insert the stick that the
>> Startup Disk Creator wrote, Ubuntu tells me that it is a 4.0 GB
>> file system of type msdos.  So I assumed that the .iso existed as
>> a file (or folder) on the stick, but the stick's file system was
>> determined by the format.  What Startup Disk Creator did was put
>> on the stuff to make it bootable (in addition to copying the .iso
>> file).
> 
> I suspect that Creator wiped any existing filesystem and created
> an entirely new filesystem.  It warned you about overwriting the
> contents of the stick, correct?  It possibly created a new
> partition table too. After that, it probably installed grub or
> syslinux, copied the iso to the filesystem, and configured grub or
> syslinux to boot the iso.
> 
> If you poke around in the mounted stick, you'll probably deduce
> what Creator did.
> 
Indeed. Here's a link to some information about creating a bootable
USB stick:

http://forum.mandriva.com/en/viewtopic.php?t=63493

Mandriva distributes a small installer image called all.img that can
be used to install it in just about every way you might imagine,
including over the internet, from a hard disk, and so on. The link
explains steps to create a bootable USB stick and load syslinux and
that all.img file.

I've used this method successfully to load the installer on a USB stick.

Robert


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Re: [PLUG] namebench

[Robert Munro]

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On Fri, 17 Feb 2012 10:49:59 -0800 Galen Seitz wrote:
> 
> 
> "Try out namebench. It hunts down the fastest DNS servers
> available for your computer to use. 
> 
> http://code.google.com/p/namebench/

I was curious so I tried namebench. It's great!

A while ago it seemed that my ISP's DNS servers were slow, seemingly
referring a lot of my DNS queries to higher level servers repeatedly,
so I installed dnsmasq as a caching nameserver on my desktop machine.

Running namebench confirmed that there are faster DNS servers that I
can place in front of my ISP's primary DNS (Google and OpenDNS) so I
have done that. Now dnsmasq finds my habitual website haunts at 0 ms
and all my other website lookups average under 40 ms, or 150% faster.

Thanks, Galen!

Robert
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Re: [PLUG] Linux Clinic Sunday January 25

[Robert Munro]

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On Sat, 14 Jan 2012 08:13:37 -0800 (PST) Rich Shepard wrote:
> On Fri, 13 Jan 2012, dfhubb...@freegeek.org wrote:
> 
>>> Is this a hint that more people would come to the Linux Clinic
>>> if we tried to follow the example set by Nevada?  (at least in
>>> one area)
> Slot machines would be OK as long as they're not the obnoxious
> "Wheel of Fortune" variety. These are common in supermarkets and
> convenience stores throughout northern Nevada and could help
> financially support Free Geek and PLUG.

Hell, let Free Geek get a liquor license and put in the State of
Oregon video poker machines. I hear those make each bar about $100k
every year.

I'm all in favor of fleecing the innumerate, having tried to talk a
few out of their addiction to no avail. So screw 'em, they're
demanding it.

Or, if we have ethics, maybe not.

Regards,
Robert

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Re: [PLUG] Mac Cost

[Robert Munro]

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On Fri, 13 Jan 2012 22:24:00 -0800 Russell Johnson wrote:

> Part of my requirements for my laptop is that 'it just works'. If
> I have to futz with it, ever, then I'm not doing my job nor my
> boss any good. OS/X gives me that more than any other OS ever has.
> Yes, there was a learning curve, but now that the learning curve
> is mostly over, I'm more productive, and have fewer issues than
> either Windows or Linux gave me.

That's important. I'll tell you a story, because history deserves to
be told. But then history is old news, so stop reading if you do not care.

Just less than 25 years ago I drove to Southern California, with one
of those Compaq 'portable' PCs in the back of my Mazda RX7, headed
down to Orange County to replace its property tax system, due to
Proposition 13.

I was an IBM mainframe systems programmer at the time, a member of
that priesthood. I'll gloss over that Orange County work, but I
survived it, and the takeover of Arthur Young by Ernst and Whinney in
1990, somehow.

I'd bought a Zenith 12Mhz 386 portable PC, and I was the first one
that had his own PC at Ernst & Young on the west coast. I put OS/2 on
it and set up dual boot with a Windows partition, an OS/2 partition
and shared a data partition. OS/2 'just worked' and I avoided Windows
crashes that plagued my peers. Thus I was more productive and I got a
lot more work.

In the early '90s an E&Y government practice in Dallas TX got itself
in a bind and I was flown in to get a dozen huge Excel spreadsheets to
run under OS/2, because Microsoft Windows couldn't handle that memory
load.

I kept using OS/2 through about the year 2000, and I even hacked Lotus
Notes to let me do that, after IBM dropped support for it, those
swine. And no, I didn't mention that when I worked for IBM shortly
thereafter.

I could tell you many more stories, from 9600 baud access to
mainframes through $100 per CPU-second charges and executive
malfeasance and other things, however my real point here is that what
you use had better work.

Whatever you use when you're on the road, it had better work. There
are no excuses. Whether that's Linux or a Mac is up to you, but it's
damned sure not Windows. I think IT professionals know this by now and
it will become more and more well known among the population at large.
We might hope so, anyway, and we should be doing all we can to make it
accepted.

Best regards to all,
Robert
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Re: [PLUG] Laptop Locks Up

[Robert Munro]

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On Sun, 8 Jan 2012 06:33:03 -0800 (PST) Rich Shepard wrote:
> On Sat, 7 Jan 2012, Robert Munro wrote:
> 
>>> I definitely recommend that you try Firefox 9.0.1 though. It's
>>> much faster than the previous versions of Firefox, rather
>>> noticeably so.
> Robert,
> 
> Is it more conservative of memory?
> 
> I'll need to learn how to build and install 9.0.1 on a debian-based
> system as I doubt that version's in a ubuntu repository.

It is reported to use less memory, yes. I don't know if Mozilla caught
all the memory leaks, but Firefox frees memory more aggressively now:
http://www.webmonkey.com/2011/12/mozilla-unleashes-faster-smaller-firefox-9/
and http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/9.0.1/releasenotes/ .

It doesn't have separate versions for different Linux distributions,
it seems, but the download at http:/www.firefox.com works under Ubuntu
I'm told. I'd suggest that you can download the tar file to /usr/local
then as root, cd /usr/local; untar -xvjf firefox-9.0.1.tar.bz2 .

Good luck!
Robert
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Re: [PLUG] Xubuntu Laptop Locks Up

[Robert Munro]

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On Sat, 7 Jan 2012 12:40:21 -0800 (PST) Rich Shepard wrote:

> 
> Any other advice on how to set this up considering that Web access 
> is where she spends 99% of her time will be greatly accepted. I'm 
> always open to recommendations from those who know hardware better 
> than I do ... that's almost everyone.

The shutdown on cursor movement sounds like a hardware or low level
configuration glitch, however you've already ordered a replacement.

I definitely recommend that you try Firefox 9.0.1 though. It's much
faster than the previous versions of Firefox, rather noticeably so.

Enjoy,
Robert

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Re: [PLUG] ISP Changes

[Robert Munro]

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On Fri, 6 Jan 2012 13:16:32 -0800 (PST) Rich Shepard wrote:
> On Fri, 6 Jan 2012, Galen Seitz wrote:
> 
>>> Argh!!!  This affects me too.  Our office in Beaverton has a
>>> static IP from Spiritone/Frontier which is used for mail, web,
>>> and ssh.  Any suggested alternative connections supporting
>>> static IP would be most welcome.
> And please make these alternative connections visible to all of
> us!

Megapath (formerly Speakeasy and Covad) might still provision static
IP addresses to residential DSL customers in the Portland area via
Seattle.

I've had a measly 1.5Mb/300kb DSL link at Speakeasy for almost 10
years and one of its techs once told me that all its DSL links are
static IPs.

It's bridged Ethernet to the DSLAM at the CO about half a mile away
and maybe to the Qwest office downtown, and the backhaul to the
Seattle POP is ATM. Megapath is a national MPLS network that seems
fairly reliable, although L3 had a couple of router glitches in
Chicago in recent months.

The DSL ($65/mo) plus Qwest line ($35/mo) charges add up to $100/month.

I've been considering switching to a fiber connection from
CenturyLink, but the inertia of not wanting to change my email address
plus worries about Qwest blocking port 25 and its awful reputation for
service have so far kept me from making the leap. I don't know if
CenturyLink offers static IP addresses to its fiber broadband
customers, surely others do.

I don't think Megapath can resell fiber broadband in the Portland
area, but its phone number is 800-556-5829.

HTH,
Robert
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Re: [PLUG] CD/DVD internal drive recommendations

[Robert Munro]

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On Tue, 13 Dec 2011 18:49:44 -0800 Denis Heidtmann wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 13, 2011 at 4:13 PM, Michael Rasmussen
>  wrote:
>>> On Tue, Dec 13, 2011 at 01:44:01PM -0800, Denis Heidtmann
>>> wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 13, 2011 at 12:08 PM, Tim
> 
>>> I've had numerous LiteOn drives die on me over the
>>> years.  I don't buy anything from them anymore.

I have a LiteOn CD/DVD drive in my desktop system and it's always done
everything that I've needed it to do, including burning and reading CD
and miniCD discs. Granted, I'm not a user of DVDs, but it seems solid.

ENU sold me this drive, and I don't think it would carry this brand if
there were a lot of warranty returns and complaints. It might have got
better than the bad old LiteOn that you might remember from years ago.

Microsoft will always be Microsoft: dishonest, corrupt and scheming to
screw everyone else, including its partners, developers and customers.

But some Asian companies do learn and improve over time - they have to
or they'll get overtaken by those that adapt better - that is the way.

In the '60s there were cheap transistor radios made by Japaneses firms
no one had ever heard of - odd names like Sony, Toshiba and Panasonic.

And a couple of Japanese companies made motorcycles. I had a Honda 90,
and later a Yamaha 250. And yes I nearly killed myself on both of 'em.

A few years later, Honda was selling cars in the US. I bought one, and
I don't think I ever did more than change the oil in it, occasionally.

By the mid-80s, US automakers were in trouble, the Japanese cars were
killing them. What happened? Deming taught Japan statistic discipline.

Assess the present products from Asian sources. Don't go by reputation
from years ago. Those companies can change fairly quickly, to survive.

Sorry for the long post, but I thought this deserved some context here.

Regards,
Robert
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Re: [PLUG] Thankyou Re: Hardware question from "fly-over country"

[Robert Munro]

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On Wed, 30 Nov 2011 06:52:26 -0600 Richard Owlett wrote:
> 
> Richard Owlett wrote:
>>> I'm in RURAL SW Missouri. A local used/surplus computer store
>>> is offering a Dell Latitude D620 (4GB memory, 80GB hard drive,
>>> Intel Core Duo @ 2.4 GHz) for ~$500. It reportedly has the
>>> majority of manufacturer's warranty.
>>> 
>>> Any comments on how suitable a Linux platform this would be?
> 
> Thanks to various answers received I did enough research to find
> the store was not telling me everything. Browsing newegg.com
> indicates I should be able to get a NEW name brand similar unit for
> the same or lower price. Someone mentioned linux-laptop.net, it
> should give me an idea if any choice I make is reasonable.
> 
A couple of further comments.

Unless you need, or really want and can afford the latest thing, you
will find a better deal by buying used. Since you want a notebook or
laptop, you should understand that they never offer the leading-edge
performance, due to the cost and power tradeoffs compared to desktop
systems, so the latest often is not that much better. Do compare the
prices and specifications of some fairly recent used machines to new
ones to see this.

Another thing to understand is that linux-laptop.net has reports for
machines that have been out long enough for Linux users to test them
with distributions available at the time. This has two implications.
First, you won't see the latest machines there for a while. Secondly
the reports on machines may not be current with the latest software.

Best wishes,
Robert





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Re: [PLUG] Hardware question from "fly over country"

[Robert Munro]

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On Mon, 28 Nov 2011 21:20:35 -0600 Richard Owlett wrote:
> 
> I'm in RURAL SW Missouri. A local used/surplus computer store is
> offering a Dell Latitude D620 (4GB memory, 80GB hard drive, Intel
> Core Duo @ 2.4 GHz) for ~$500. It reportedly has the majority of
> manufacturer's warranty.
> 
> Any comments on how suitable a Linux platform this would be?

It might be okay but, in general, you will get a much better deal off
eBay or even Craigslist than from a local storefront with its markup.

As always, research extensively whatever machine you consider buying,
including price comparisons. Yes, add in the shipping/insurance cost.

I had too many Dell notebooks at E&Y, and those all eventually broke,
but maybe I'm biased. However I'd suggest you buy a Thinkpad instead.

YMMV,
Robert
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Re: [PLUG] 32 vs 64 bit and/or single vs multi-core?

[Robert Munro]

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On Fri, 25 Nov 2011 19:59:30 -0600 Richard Owlett wrote:
> 
> In the "real world", is there a difference for an average/typical
> user[?]

Yes, 32-bit is easier, as not all software is built for 64-bit systems.

> I'm contemplating the move from Windows to Linux. Coward that I am,
> I'm considering separate hardware as testbed.

You can run dual-boot on one system without too much trouble. That has
been solved for about 10 years. The better Linux distributions can see
the Windows system on the hard disk and install around it, providing a
boot menu entry for it. However, if you have time you can confirm this.

> I spend most of my time in text editing and web surfing - doubt any
> advantage there.

No, I have a 64-bit capable AMD processor based desktop on which I run
a 32-bit version of Mandriva Linux. It does everything I need it to do.

You might install both 32-bit and 64-bit Linux systems if you have the
disk space (a decent desktop Linux system fits into 10GB or less while
hard disks are much larger now). You can use both systems to find out.

> My other interest include Scilab, Scioslab, and gnuplot. I would
> run and display display results of *LARGE* fft's of _stored_ data.
> "Real time" minor importance.

Those interests might lead you to install a 64-bit Linux system. Sure.

> Are there subtle advantages to wider data path and/or multiple
> cores?

The wider data path imposes power and heat dissipation costs, but that
isn't a big deal, I would think, costing maybe 25W, between those two,
but I'm open to correction if anyone has better numbers to quote here.

A dual-core chip is helpful on a desktop system - or a smartphone, for
that matter - but more cores than two is really server territory, lest
you can find a game or something - like scientific processing - that's
able to use a multi-core chip. My desktop is a dual-core chip but YMMV.

> Are there advantages to 64 bit implementations of Linux?

As far as I can tell, only the larger memory and database access that
it offers. I haven't needed it, but I understand that some people do.

HTH,
Robert
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Re: [PLUG] Open Office Starts Slow

[Robert Munro]

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On Tue, 22 Nov 2011 10:38:00 -0800 Richard C. Steffens wrote:
> 
> Something has changed on my machine with regards to the amount of
> time it takes Open Office to load. I can't put my finger on exactly
> when I noticed the change, but I think it was in the last couple of
> weeks. I don't recall if there were any updates to Java or Open
> Office recently -- wondering if that might have anything to do with
> it.


I don't know from Ubuntu, which you said you're using, but Open Office
(and Libre Office) use Java, specifically the Java Runtime Environment
(JRE) that is distributed by Oracle (nee Sun) or some other developer.

The starting point for learning what release of JRE you have
installed: http://www.java.com/en/ . Of course that likes the
'official' version.

I use the 'official' Sun (now Oracle) Java because I've found that
some other versions, like the "Iced Tea" Java maintained by my
distribution, (Mandriva), don't play well with a Java applet that I
use under Firefox.

That Java applet is an online poker client-in-the-web-browser that's at:
https://www.free-bwin.com/poker.aspx . It doesn't require Windows, yay!

(You're all welcome to come play poker for play money but I should
warn you that I have a 'bankroll' of almost $900k and don't take
prisoners.)

So, every once in awhile Mandriva decides to update its version of
Iced Tea, so I allow it to do that. Then... I remove the package
immediately using Mandriva's quite handy GUI-based RPM package
maintenance facility.

I always check to make sure it's truly gone by using "about:plugins"
in Firefox. Lately Firefox has this online under Tools -> Add-ons for
this.

Also, I occasionally update the version of Java that's on my system,
by downloading the latest version from http://www.java.com/en/ and
placing that into effect. That process requires that I remove the
older version first, then make the install file executable using chmod
a+x [filename] and run the the install file, which installs the RPM
and all libraries.

There's also a version of the latest 'official' Sun/Oracle Java
upgrade for Debian based Linux systems.

To tell Firefox where to find Java, I create a link to the Java
runtime launcher as root as follows, using the latest version for this
example:

cd /usr/local/firefox/plugins  # the latest Firefox lives in /usr/local
ln -sf /usr/java/jre1.6.0_29/lib/i386/libnpjp2.so libnpjp2.so

And Open Office is happy, too. I keep only the one version of Java as
I don't have any use for it other than to run Open Office and play poker.

ls -al /usr/java # date/time data removed for readability
lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root   16 default -> /usr/java/latest/
drwxr-xr-x  7 root root 4096 jre1.6.0_29/
lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root   21 latest -> /usr/java/jre1.6.0_29/

Best regards,
Robert
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Re: [PLUG] chmod Question

[Robert Munro]

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On Fri, 18 Nov 2011 14:24:59 -0800 Keith Lofstrom wrote:
> On Fri, Nov 18, 2011 at 11:38:17AM -0800, Rich Shepard wrote:
>>> I inadvertently changed permissions on all directories and
>>> files in my ~/ to 755 (including the dot files, of course).
>>> Only the directories should have those perms; regular files
>>> should be 644.

> I assume you have no backups, you naughty boy.  We should spank
> you, and if we need to wear the black high-heeled boots, it will
> cost you extra.  :-?

> Another clinic activity, sounds like.  You really should do nightly
> backups...

Whipping is more fun, I hear.

And weekly backups to a different place. If you don't stop your
backups right away upon realizing that something has been corrupted,
that will just propagate to your daily backups, rendering them useless
to recover.

That's why you should also do weekly backups to another target location.

Of course the more elegant solution is to collect the backup
iterations by renaming a couple of older copies before copying the
latest version. The Linux distribution cron jobs that backup log files
do this properly.

But even then, I'd still do weekly backups. You might not know for days.

Not to rub it in, but it's also good practice to backup anything
you're about to change before you do it, in this instance your $HOME
directory.

I hope you can recover without too much pain.
Robert
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Re: [PLUG] Firefox Cookie Management

[Robert Munro]

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On Thu, 17 Nov 2011 09:59:12 -0800 Richard C. Steffens wrote:
> 
> An article in yesterday's USA Today (USA Yesterday?) described
> tracking done by various web sites using cookies. It focused on
> Facebook in particular and talked about the various ways Facebook
> tracks visitors to a Facebook site. My understanding is that this
> is only possible through the use of cookies -- at least for those
> not logged in to Facebook.
> 
> So, if I visited a Facebook page I'm supposed to have been given a
>  cookie that will in some way track my web travels. I think it's 
> something to do with whether or not the pages I visit have a
> Facebook connection on them, but I don't really know those
> details.
> 
> What I'd like to know is how I can inspect individual cookies to 
> determine where they came from. It appears that I can "manage" my 
> Firefox cookies by clicking on Tools > Clear Recent History ... . I
> have only a few options. I can choose the time frame to clear, and
> I can choose the category of thing to clear, cookies being one of
> the categories.
> 
> I don't want to clear all the cookies. I want to look at the
> collection, which now appears to be kept with sql-lite.
> 
> Does anyone know of a tool that let's me inspect the cookie
> collection and decide what to keep and what to get rid of?

If you prefer not to be tracked and have all your web browsing sliced,
diced and analyzed to a fare-thee-freakin-well by every marketeer and
gawd knows who else on the planet, the safest thing to do is allow as
few cookies as possible, and even restrict many to be session cookies.

You can do this in Firefox at Edit > Preferences > Privacy, simply by
unchecking the box 'Accept cookies from sites' and setting up explicit
permissions with the Exceptions button, which opens a list of cookies.

Go through the list and delete all cookies for websites that you don't
recognize as places such as forums where you've registered an account.

Those websites for which you want to keep your userids between visits,
you should Allow, and other websites that you want to access that need
you to allow cookies will usually be satisfied by 'Allow for Session'.

You should also click the checkbox 'Tell websites I do not want to be
tracked', plus 'Clear history when Firefox closes', to foil Facecrack.

You might be surprised at how few cookies you actually need to permit.

Regards,
Robert


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Re: [PLUG] Which distribution has the best staying power?

[Robert Munro]

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On Wed, 16 Nov 2011 08:29:02 -0800 chris (fool) mccraw wrote:
> ok everyone bust out your longest-running-linux story--this might 
> get hilarious =)

Okay, I'll tell what I have, though it doesn't come close to some long
running Linux systems that have already been mentioned in this thread.

I have a box with an old MSI mobo, a 1.5GHz Athlon chip and 512MB RAM,
plus a SCSI controller, a couple of old 10K RPM 10GB Quantum SCSI hard
drives and a floppy drive. All but the case, PSU, RAM, Ethernet cards,
CD-ROM drive, keyboard and mouse were picked up at Free Geek for about
$50 total, and the 15" CRT monitor was a salvaged 'gift' from a friend.

Not counting what I spent to build the box initially over 12 years ago
before the original system imploded due to CPU fan failure, I probably
spent less than $200 to rebuild this machine for a firewall and backup.

The system is a rock solid firewall running iptables that I've
written, and I've never been hacked, although I see lots of attempts
in my logs.

It's running Mandriva 2008.1 which is no longer supported, and KDE
3.5. It stays powered on 24/7/365, and is only rebooted after the
occasional power outage. I have used it as a backup desktop system
when my desktop box had hardware problems, but mostly it's a firewall,
print server and an internet radio server for streaming m3u playlists
at Paradise Radio.

It also backs up all of my personal data files once every week, just
in case I ever lose the three backups I keep on my desktop system plus
the backup on my laptop. All three systems are linked by rsync
backups, and those two non-desktop systems rsync their cron job logs
to the desktop.

Yes, I am a bit paranoid about backups. Having a CPU fan fail
silently, taking out a motherboard, PSU and a couple of hard drives
will do that.

I'll probably install the latest Mandriva, or maybe Mageia, on that
box one of these days, but I'm not in a hurry to do that. It's running
fine now for what I need it to do.

Anyway, that is my oldest Linux operating system that is still
kicking. I enjoy hearing about other people's Linux systems, so please
do share.

All the best,
Robert
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Re: [PLUG] Is Qwest/Centurylink a good ISP?

[Robert Munro]

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As my email address reveals, my ISP is Speakeasy. I've been with it
for about eight years and during that time it's been bought by Best
Buy (!) and then recently merged into Megapath, a national MPLS
enabled network.

However, twice in the past month Megapath has f*cked up and turned
into Zeropath during my work day (I work online, in London). I've been
using Skype to chat with London, while at the same time I could not
reach any internet addresses beyond the Speakeasy POP in Seattle,
which prevented me from working. That's happened twice, and I am
getting fed up with it even though Megapath worked the problems and
came back up within hours. That never happened before, so I'm
considering changing to another ISP.

What do people here think of Qwest/Centurylink as an ISP? Is it decent?

I know it's a big telco, one of the Baby Bells, but it was the only
one to resist the Bush administration's demands to suck up all its
internet data and the CEO 'coincidentally' was charged with insider
trading, and went to prison, so it can't be all bad. How good / bad is
it as an ISP?

Feel free to send war stories and opinions to my private email
address, if you don't want to reveal your experience or thoughts here
in public.

Thanks in advance,
Robert




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Re: [PLUG] RIP - Dennis Ritchie

[Robert Munro]

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On Thu, 13 Oct 2011 19:02:04 -0500 Fred James wrote:
>>> Wayne E. Van Loon Sr. wrote:
>>> 
> Pete Lancashire wrote:
> 
>>> http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2011/10/dennis-ritchie/

>>> 
>>> 
> This story may be apocryphal, and, I can't recall just
> where I read or heard it, but the story goes that Dennis
> Ritchie was on a committee at Bell Labs that was outlining
> a new computer operating system. Some on the committee were
> more conservative the Ritchie, who started referring to the
> committee as the "eunuchs committee". The name for the
> operating systems was later sanitized, of course, to Unix. 
> Wayne
> 
>>> I believe the name was meant to be a play on Multics.
>>> 
>>> http://www.livinginternet.com/i/iw_unix_dev.htm 
>>> http://www.multicians.org/unix.html
>>> 
> And ... 

I like the "eunuchs committee" story lots better than the "Unics" story.

The wikipedia entry seems to be a good overview and objective about
the checkered, if not tortured path of Unix development to what we
have now.

For those who enjoy Unix history, there is another narrative written
by Dr Peter Salus that's available free online at Groklaw:

http://www.groklaw.net/staticpages/index.php?page=20051013231901859 .

I'm happy to have missed the Unix wars and all the turmoil they
created while I was ignoring it and working on IBM mainframes instead,
but I do like where it wound up in Linux, even if it uses
little-endian machines.

Robert

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Re: [PLUG] Resolving a DNS/postfix issue

[Robert Munro]

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On Tue, 11 Oct 2011 08:32:29 Rich Shepard 
wrote:
> 
>>> However, I fixed it by re-installing the bind package from the
>>> original distribution, then upgrading with the patch. Now dig
>>> and host work.
> Well, host now works:
> 
> [rshepard@salmo ~]$ host leafe.com leafe.com has address
> 67.23.35.254 leafe.com mail is handled by 10 leafe.com.
> 
> but postfix is still not resolving the hostname:
> 
> Oct 11 08:21:44 salmo postfix/smtpd[28484]: NOQUEUE: reject: RCPT
> from unknown[67.23.35.254]: 450 4.7.1 Client host rejected: cannot
> find your hostname, [67.23.35.254];
> from= to=
> proto=ESMTP helo=
> 
> /var/log/maillog shows:
> 
> Oct 11 08:26:44 salmo postfix/smtpd[30975]: warning: 67.23.35.254:
> hostname 67-23-35-254.static.slicehost.net verification failed:
> Name or service not known Oct 11 08:26:44 salmo
> postfix/smtpd[30975]: connect from unknown[67.23.35.254]
> 
> leafe.com is hosted by rackspace.com on their slicehost.net
> service.
> 
> Is there anything I can do to fix this? Or, do I take this to the
> postfix mail list?

Have you tried running newaliases? Postfix uses that to install names.

HTH,
Robert
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Re: [PLUG] List Guidelines

[Robert Munro]

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On Tue, 4 Oct 2011 10:09:32 "Michael R"  wrote:

> Which brings an alternate solution to mind.? Rather than banning
> Robinson from the list have a process [...] append the subject line
> of all his messages with "! KNOWN TROLL !"


Ever read "The Scarlet Letter"? Might as well shoot him, and be done.

I'm not a moderator of this list, nor even an actively participating
member of PLUG in terms of going to meetings or Free Geek on Sundays.

However, I do follow the list in digest form and sometimes attempt to
help others resolve problems they encounter with Linux. And I learn a
lot just reading the list, which helps me keep my own system running.

I think I was also the first person to object to Michael's rant about
the ReactOS people kicking him off their IRC channel, or whatever, on
the basis that he *knew* it was off-topic because he prefixed with an
[OT] flag, and it was about a crazy Russian Windows clone project and
had nothing to do with Linux. I wrote that it was inappropriate here.

Since then it's blown up, but I've stayed out of it and just watched,
but now I'm going to say some things and I will try to keep it brief.

The hint "civil and on-topic" apparently hasn't been well understood,
at least not by Michael. That means no politics, no religion, no how,
and maybe it could be made explicit, but I doubt that will help much.

Michael: I don't care what you might or might not believe, nor should
you care what I or anyone else on this list believes, or even makes a
passing joke about. That you did so was a trespass upon their rights,
and you know the Lord's Prayer, right? "Forgive us our trespasses..."

I think you owe Keith a public apology for having insulted him over a
word he used in just a joke. How dare you try to impose your beliefs?

For everyone else: I apologize for writing as such length, but I will
finish what I have to say. Ironically perhaps, I don't think the PLUG
list should ban Michael, unless and until he fails to learn from this
experience. It doesn't bother me to skip over his long posts on stuff
that I know nothing about, as it doesn't for any other member's posts.

But, I'm not running systems trying to do everything all at once, way
out in the puckerbrush. So if Michael has questions, let him ask 'em.

If he can't google and find answers, use man pages or learn how to do
troubleshooting, well, that's his problem. We can try to help, though,
because that's what a Linux user group is and we should live up to it.

However, if Michael refuses to apologize to Keith, I will say ban him.

There is nothing more dangerous than religious intolerance, and in far
too many parts of the world that gets people murdered. It is the evil,
and if Michael will not tolerate others then we should banish him now.

Regards,
Robert
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Re: [PLUG] [OT] Problems in the ReactOS community

[Robert Munro]

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On Wed, 07 Sep 2011 13:51:13 -0700 Michael C. Robinson wrote:
> 
> Windows, especially NT based Windows, is beyond the scope of 
> Freedos.

You knew this wasn't appropriate for PLUG when you posted it, thus the
[OT] flag in the subject line. This lead sentence is about... Windows!



> Please, someone go ahead and get the code, form another community, 
> and continue development if this project is still worthwhile.

If you want to develop ReactOS, no one is stopping you if that's
*your* itch. But it's not related to Linux.



> Is there a way I can complain about the reactos.org site and get 
> them sanctioned?  Taking the site down would be a good way to 
> adjust attitudes in that community.

Take it over there. As a Linux user I don't care. However it is
*their* project and appealing for people to hack their servers is
objectionable.



Please do not post about it here. You know the rules. PLUG is for Linux.

Robert
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Re: [PLUG] Article One Partners

[Robert Munro]

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On Sat, 3 Sep 2011 22:00:36 -0700 Keith Lofstrom wrote:
> 
> I recently learned about Article One Partners, a legal research 
> firm that specializes in finding prior art to bust patents. They
> use crowdsourcing to look for articles, existing technologies, 
> public presentations, etc. that invalidate patents, and offer 
> sizable rewards ($5K and higher) for research that does so.
> 
> Most of the patents in question are hard technology, but some are
> software, and some may be a threat to Linux.   One example is
> "INTERPRETER FOR COMPILED AND THEN CONVERTED APPLICATIONS". That
> sounds a lot like Perl 6 Parrot to me, and Pascal from a long time
> ago.  So this organization is relevant to protecting Linux, and
> perhaps a way to make some money.
> 
> I have more important things to do right now.  Over the next year,
> killing two or three patents for sport, and earning $10K or so for
> the opportunity, might be a fun way to while away a week or two.
> Getting paid for reading and thinking and writing.
> 
> http://www.articleonepartners.com
> 
> Keith

Er, I don't want to rain on anyone's picnic, but there are some items
about this firm that you might want to be aware of and consider well.

I asked a couple of people about this firm who follow software patent
litigation quite closely. I received responses within minutes. Though
they didn't want to be quoted by name, they made the following points:

* AOP has some large clients like Google, and has some lucrative work.

* One person said he couldn't confirm payouts but didn't try very hard.

* The firm is a hired gun; it will do work for any client that pays it.

* It doesn't make its findings public, so the community cannot benefit.

* Marshall Phelps, former Microsoft head of licensing, is on its board.

This might be a way to make some money, but there are other
researchers that are better to work with, in my correspondents'
opinions, including the Linux Foundation, the FSF, Software Freedom
Law Center, and Pubpat, among others, even if they don't pay. And if
you follow patent lawsuits and think you can offer evidence of prior
art to a white hat defendant, you can always contact its attorneys
directly and negotiate a paid deal.

Also, if you are or might one day become a software developer, you
must be aware that reading software patents, and doing research on
prior art is *not* a good idea. If any software product you have or
might ever be connected with is ever implicated in a patent lawsuit,
infringement may be deemed "willful" if it can be inferred you were
aware of that patent.

Just some information and thoughts to consider...

Robert





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Re: [PLUG] Linux vs Unix (was One-liners to empty all files in a directory)

[Robert Munro]

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On Thu, 18 Aug 2011 15:47:56 -0700 Aaron Burt wrote:
> 
> On Thu, Aug 18, 2011 at 02:27:59PM -0700, Randal L. Schwartz 
> wrote:
>> I'd actually argue that there are far more non-Linux Unix 
>> installations in commercial space than Linux installations. Maybe
>> more hobbyist Linux installs.
> 
> About the only way I could think of that pencilling out would be
> if you counted personal iPhones and Macs, and not Linux VMs.
> 
> And even then, it's about even-steven at $JOB (ad agency with lots 
> of Mac-loving "creatives".)
> 
> We dumped the Solaris boxen years ago.  Linux tends to run on lots 
> of little devices, while HPUX and AIX usually goes on the Big 
> Enterprise Host.
> 
> (Won't go into $JOB[-1] where Linuxboxen outnumbered coworkers by 
> an order of magnitude or so.  Heaven.)
> 
> But that's just my experience,

With all great respect to Randall, I have to agree with you about this.

Maybe - just maybe - if we include all iPhones, iPads and Macs as
Unix, add in all the retail chain stores running SCO Unix, and even
throw in all the consumer electronics devices running a cut-down
variant of BSD, you might be able to count up enough Unix boxes to
match the number of Linux boxes, under some interpretation of
'commercial space'. (But lots of set-top boxes and the like run Linux,
so they go in that other list. And Android smartphones are selling
like hotcakes, will crush iPhones.)

And then there's Google - it alone puts 10,000 or more Linux servers
in each of its large datacenters, and it has seven of those at the
moment, not counting its smaller, rented facilities. And Amazon,
Rackspace and a huge raft of other hosting vendors, all with a few
Linux boxes at the smallest ones up to hundreds or even thousands at
the really large ones.

There is also the financial industry. It was among the first to pick
up Linux, and for years it did not talk about it because Wall Street
firms regarded it as a competitive advantage. But the trading floors,
and hot high-frequency trading operations, and huge number-crunching
analytical backends mostly run... Linux. There are still a few
mainframes involved for high reliability, and also some Unix systems,
but - though I cannot prove this - I'll bet that the majority of
financial systems run Linux, even those that run on IBM mainframes
under VM. Yes, most core banking systems still run on IBM mainframes,
but we're comparing Linux vs Unix, and those core banking transaction
systems are relatively few in number.

Oh, and supercomputers too. The vast majority of those are using
Linux, as we see at the Top 500 list -
http://top500.org/stats/list/37/osfam - plus most of those, over 80
percent, have between 4k and 16k processors.

CERN and its worldwide network of university partners run mostly
Linux, and even the US military is moving to Linux. It no doubt still
has some Solaris, AIX and HPUX servers in its myriad commands and
organizations, but each of those big Unix boxes is surrounded by
dozens to hundreds of workstations and PCs that are running either
Linux or Microsoft Windows.

We all know Windows doesn't count, anymore. It's the stupid consumer OS.

Linus Torvalds was not kidding about world domination. Sharing is grace.

Regards,
Robert
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Re: [PLUG] Confused about multi core

[Robert Munro]

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On Fri 29 Jul 2011 08:59:57 -0700 (PDT) "Michael C. Robinson" wrote:
>> Robert Munro wrote: The easiest way to see if it's single-threaded,
>> and whether the CPU is a bottleneck, is to install a visual
>> monitor. There a several, however I like gkrellm. It's easy to
>> configure and will show this at a glance.
> 
> That's easier than running top and enabling per core view by pressing
> the 1 key?

That works, too, yes. To each their own, and whatever floats your boat.
I just like gkrellm because it is visual, and shows a lot of data fast.

I keep one instance running stacked monitor panes, on the left side of a
virtual desktop updating every 1/10th second, using merely 1% of CPU.

But now I'm curious. What did you see? Is MPEG4 playback multithreaded?

If so, what application are you using that multithreads an MPEG4 codec?

Whether it multithreads or not, is it saturating one or more CPU cores?

If not, look to your video graphics card (and its memory size, perhaps)
and the installed memory size and speed, as has already been suggested.

Are you streaming video from the 'net? If so, the delays might be there
as opposed to in your own system. If not, what hard drive's driving it?

At some risk of preaching to the choir (albeit qualified, having served
on the editorial review board of the Computer Measurement Group in some
previous life), the process of finding performance bottlenecks involves
looking at and measuring the use of every resource used by some process.

You get adequate performance when the most heavily stressed resource is
not maxed out by the processing you're trying to support on the system,
where the 'system' can involve resources that you have no control over.

That's my two cents worth, anyway.
Robert






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Re: [PLUG] Confused about multi core processors

[Robert Munro]

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On Wed, 27 Jul 2011 20:16:19 -0700 "Michael C. Robinson" wrote:

> The trouble obviously is that there are three upgrade paths.  I can 
> increase the memory, I am upgrading the video, and I can change the 
> processor.  So there are two upgrade paths left assuming that I have 
> chosen wisely when it comes to the video card.  Do I need to run the 
> other two upgrade paths down?
> 
> Does MPEG4 playback require a dual core or better processor?
> 
> Will an atom processor outperform a Pentium 4?

Matt has already addressed most of your questions and I concur. As to
multicore processors, depending upon what software application you're
using MPEG4 playback might be single-threaded so the raw speed of the
processor and not how many cores it has will in that case limit speed.

As Matt said, the CPU might not be the bottleneck causing a slowdown.

The easiest way to see if it's single-threaded, and whether the CPU is a
bottleneck, is to install a visual monitor. There a several, however I
like gkrellm. It's easy to configure and will show this at a glance.

HTH,
Robert


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Re: [PLUG] dns monitor

[Robert Munro]

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On Tue, 26 Jul 2011 10:07:03 -0700 nathan w wrote:
> 
> Why? This query reminds me of an article i read describing the
> process of dns poisoning by pushing "updates" to a dns server at the
> moment it updates... So again... Why do you want this?
> 
>> On Tue, Jul 26, 2011 8:43 am wes wrote:
>> 
>> Does anyone know of a tool that can monitor DNS replies and notify
>> on success/failure?
>> 
>> Basically, I want to find out the moment a DNS server (that I do
>> not control) has updated.

Well, I think that unless we have evidence to the contrary we should
consider everyone interested in Linux technology for honorable goals.

Any technique can be used for good or ill, starting with flint knives
and proceeding all the way up to quantum physics. CERN runs on Linux.

wes - I believe the command 'dig' might let you find out when any DNS
server has been updated. Run it as a cron job every five minute or so
and pipe its output to /var/log/messages, or something. I'd use that.

R




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Re: [PLUG] Setting ADSL Bandwidth

[Robert Munro]

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On Sun, 24 Jul 2011 06:16:47 -0700 (PDT) Rich Shepard wrote:
> 
> Last Monday I upgraded my Aracnet account to the maximum bandwidth
> that Frontier reports for my location (3M down, 768K up). The change
> was supposed to take no longer than 48 hours. It is now a week and my
> bandwidth has not incresed (according to speedtest.net).
> 
> Isn't such a change a matter of a few keystrokes by the Telco?
> 
> Aracnet/SpiritOne tech support sent Frontier a query on Thursday but
> has not had a response since then. I'm trying to understand where the
> problem might be.

Aracnet/SpiritOne is your ISP and Frontier (formerly Verizon, perhaps)
is the ILEC (telco) or maybe it's a CLEC or DLEC, leasing your circuit
from a telco (like Qwest, for example) and reselling that to your ISP.

In my admittedly limited experience (as Speakeasy is my ISP, and Covad
is the CLEC under the telco, Qwest), provisioning an ADSL line takes a
lot longer than 48 hours. That work must be scheduled by the companies
and that can take more than one week, perhaps up to two or three weeks.

As I understand it, your telco pair terminates in a local telco office,
where the voice bandwidth is split off to the POTS circuits, and higher
frequency ADSL bandwidth is terminated at the local DSLAM (essentially,
a rack of ADSL cards hooked to an edge router, sitting on a fast link).

If the ILEC (or CLEC/DLEC) that owns your ADSL card at the DSLAM has to
switch that out for a faster one, that could account for a provisioning
delay, such as you seem to be experiencing.

I only know this because Speakeasy made the entire process transparent,
both when I initially ordered my ADSL line and again later, as I moved.
It showed me the work orders, schedules and confirmations of work done.

You now know everything I do about ADSL provisioning (well, except for
fact that apparently the backhaul on my line uses ATM from my DSLAM to
Speakeasy's Seattle POP, which sort of blew my mind when I heard that).

Perhaps Aracnet/SpiritOne will share its record of orders, etc., to the
ILEC/CLEC/DLEC with you. That's what I'd ask for, if I had the problem.

This sort of thing makes me hesitate to think about changing my ISP, or
even ordering a higher speed link. I can't afford my ADSL link to fail,
though I might consider a backup or a dual-homed setup for reliability.

HTH and good luck!
Robert
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Re: [PLUG] Odd shutdown behavior

[Robert Munro]

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On Wed, 20 Jul 2011 10:00:15 -0700 Paul Johnston wrote:

> It is as though the x86 box has a shutdown checklist and does
> everything except the last few items.  Then, when starting a new
> session, it does those last few shutdown items from the previous
> session, shuts down, then initiates a normal boot process. Anybody
> know what's going on here?

What is the hardware box? Offhand, it sounds like maybe a BIOS glitch,
since the symptoms in both Windows XP and Ubuntu seem somewhat similar.

Ubuntu, at least, should run /sbin/halt to power down. It doesn't work.

You might get into the BIOS setup with the DEL key or something else at
power-up prior to boot and look in there for shutdown behavior choices.

If you don't see anything in there, you can search for similar shutdown
problems reported for the brand and model machine. Or see if there is a
more recent BIOS available for the system or more likely the mainboard.

Robert




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Re: [PLUG] HP all-in-one printer issue

[Robert Munro]

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On Tue, 19 Jul 2011 17:18:32 -0500 Fred James wrote:

> My 7310 seems to want to have something like the alignment page and 
> clean print heads run every few days no matter what other activity
> has occurred.

There is good reason why The INQUIRER starts nearly every article about
HP with the lede lead-in *FLOGGER OF EXPENSIVE PRINTER INK* or the like.

On the one hand, its 'give away the razor and sell the blades' strategy
works - awesome inkjet printers have never been so cheap, while the ink
cartridge prices make your eyes water - but there are corner cases, etc.

For many people, HP's scheme makes sense. I print, at most, a few pages
per month, but those that print more volume might not like this HP deal.

Everyone needs to work out their own economics for their printing needs.

Robert


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Re: [PLUG] HP all-in-one printer issue

[Robert Munro]

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On Mon, 18 Jul 2011 at 11:47:47 -700 PM, wes wrote:
> If it's worth a couple hundred dollars to fix (probably less, but be 
> prepared), there are companies out there specifically to fix your
> old printer. The one I use is called Laser Services. worth a phone
> call?

Okay, if you've reset your printer, you might want to try another Linux
distribution. I've always had no problems setting up an HP 4215 printer
using Mandriva. You might try a Live CD or even install it, then try it.

In Mandriva's Control Center, you just click on the HP 4200 printer and
away it goes. It automatically installs quite a lot of various packages
but when it's done, the printer works. I doubt that Fedora does as much.

At least then you'll know it is not the printer, but the distro support.

HTH,
Robert



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Re: [PLUG] System Files in User's Home Directory Trash

[Robert Munro]

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On Sun, 26 Jun 2011 06:50:43 Rich Shepard wrote:

> Now I'm reminded why I did not remove these files before. In
> /home/pamela/.local/share/Trash/Files/ are what appears to be the
> entire system; for example, I see directories for /Xll, /cups, /dbus.
>
> No directory is a link, and none of the files in these directories is
> a link. When I run 'find' on a file I see they're also where they
> belong (e.g.:
>
>   find / -name xkb
>
> /home/pamela/.local/share/Trash/files/Xll/xkb
> /var/lib/xkb
> /usr/share/X11/xkb
> /usr/share/xfce4/xkb
>
> That the files in her home directory are not softlinks is my concern
> about deleting the entire files/ directory.
>
> Advice?

Are you sure that *none* of the directories in the Trash chain, i.e.,
/home/pamela/.local ,
/home/pamela/.local/share ,
/home/pamela/.local/share/Trash , and
/home/pamela/.local/share/Trash/files , and the subdirectories there,
are links? I'd do ls -al on all of those (piped to less) to make sure.

Deleting a hard link or a soft link just deletes the link, I believe,
not the file linked-to. I just tested that on my system here, but YMMV.

I'd pick a file with a unique name in /usr/share (something that doesn't
look important) and copy it to my home directory. Then delete the copy
that's in /home/pamela/.local/share/Trash/files . See if it still exists
in /usr/share after that and, if so, it should be safe to delete all of
the /home/share/.local/share/Trash/files directory and all its contents.

If the file disappears from /usr/share , then restore the backup saved
in your home directory by recopying it back to /usr/share , and rethink.

Robert
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Re: [PLUG] PLUG Digest, Vol 81, Issue 33

[Robert Munro]

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On Fri, 24 Jun 2011 18:50:32, Rich Shepard wrote:
> 
>On the Toshiba running Xubuntu (10/10?) the trash "folder" in ~/pamela
> appears to contain system files and directories. Why might this be? Should I
> try to move them elsewhere? I think they've been there for a few
> distribution versions.
> 

Just guessing, but it appears that the user 'pamela' once tried to copy
some system files and directories and did not specify a destination, so
they were copied to the ~/pamela directory, then they deleted those and
that moved those files and directories to the ~/pamela/trash directory.

I'd just delete them all with rm /home/pamela/trash/* . Even if any are
links to real system files and directories, that should just delete the
links after asking for confirmation. Once you see that, you can Ctrl-C,
then use rm -rf /home/pamela/trash/* .

HTH,
Robert
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Re: [PLUG] monitor aspect ratios (was Natty is here; Update)

[Robert Munro]

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On 05/05/2011 08:11 AM, plug-requ...@lists.pdxlinux.org wrote:
> I'm not a big fan of the new "landscape" monitors. I use an older 4:3 20 
> inch LCD because I like the vertical space for text reading/writing 
> work. I dread the day it gives out because only the band-aid form-factor 
> monitors seem to be available now. They don't deliver the vertical size 
> I like without going into something like a 27 inch or larger, a 
> seriously spendy proposition. The 16:9 monitor may be great for watching 
> movies online or for HD gamers but that's what I have a TV for; a 4:3 
> form-factor makes more sense for my desktop PS use.

When that older 4:3 aspect ratio 20-inch LCD monitor fails, you can try
giving this guy a call: 503-860-8268. I can't read his name on the slip
but he sometimes can fix old monitors. depending on what you can afford.

I have an old Hitachi 751 19-inch monitor that does 1600x1200 just fine
but it gave out about a year ago. The gentleman at the above number was
able to replace a few capacitors, readjust it and get it working again,
and it's been rock solid ever since while running 24/7 in constant use.

Another monitor I got at Free Geek for $20 while the Hitachi was in the
shop went out later, but I wasn't willing to spend more than $50 to get
it fixed, which he couldn't do so I ended up giving it to him for parts.

There are 16:10 aspect ratio LCD monitors but you have to look for them
and yes, they're expensive.

HTH,
Robert



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Re: [PLUG] Resolving Local Web Site Access Error

[Robert Munro]

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On Mon, 4 Apr 2011 10:09:04 -0700 (PDT) Rich Shepard
 wrote:
> 
>My development version of CMS Made Simple is in /var/www/htdocs/cmsms.
> When I try to access it firefox displays a 'page not found' error.
> /var/log/httpd/error_log has nothing more:
> 
> 127.0.0.1 - - [04/Apr/2011:09:53:57 -0700] "GET /cmsms/index.php HTTP/1.1"
> 404 195
> 
>The software suite includes httpd-2.2.17, php-5.2.17 (recompiled to
> support postgres rather than mysql), postgresql-9.0.3, and
> cms-made-simple-1.8.2.
> 
>In /var/www/htdocs/ is an executable info.php that calls  ?>. But, running this results in an error:
> ./info.php: line 1: syntax error near unexpected token ('
> ./info.php: line 1: '
> 
>Where do I start looking for the source of this error? Seems strange to me
> that phpinfo() won't run.
> 
You might start with your /etc/rc.d/init.d/httpd file and find out where
your httpd.conf file is located, i.e., look for a line like:

httpdconf=${HTTPDCONF:-"-f /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf"}

Then, look in your httpd.conf file for the DocumentRoot directive.
In your case that *should* read:

DocumentRoot "/var/www/htdocs"

If not, there's your problem. If that's correct, I'm out of ideas.

HTH,
Robert





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Re: [PLUG] Algorithm's (sic) and Compilers PSU...

[Robert Munro]

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On Tue, 29 Mar 2011 09:26:04 -0700 Denis Heidtmann
 wrote:
> 
> Can anybody here force this off?

I concur, although it wouldn't be fair to Michael Robinson to ban him
from the list for posting complaints about his experience at PSU that we
can't advise him about or otherwise help him to resolve or accept.

However, I think he needs to get a grip and realize that he is solely
responsible for what he learns, how quickly he learns it, and how far he
can go with it. I don't think I'm far wrong to surmise that almost
everyone on this mailing list is self-taught in part if not all parts of
computer science, software programming in general, Linux and other
operating systems. Michael has to suck it up and either learn or not.

Certainly no one taught me IBM mainframe assembly language when I had to
learn it. I learned it by reading and doing it, a process of trial and
error, and I took what I learned and made a good living at it for about
20 years. But no one handed it to me, or tutored me. I learned, because
I worked at it. I focused on it, and was not unfocused, then.

All we can do, I think, is suggest that Michael, take your complaints
about PSU to PSU, not here. Got a Linux problem? Ask away. Thank you.

Even that's likely more than this topic deserves on this mailing list
but that's what I think.

Regards,
Robert




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Re: [PLUG] Is there a russian romance scam?

[Robert Munro]

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On Fri, 25 Mar 2011 22:57:22 -0700 Russell Johnson  wrote:
> 
> On Mar 25, 2011, at 10:16 PM, Jason Barnett wrote:
> 
>> > Personally, I just assume that anyone that I didn't give my address to, and
>> > sends me a message is a scammer.
>> > 
>> > Unless she found your email address somewhere that had your information, 
>> > she
>> > was just sending to random addresses hoping someone would bite.  I would
>> > personally assume the worst and stop all communications with her.  Too many
>> > scammers out there and even if the photos are of her, she is probably
>> > talking with a bunch of guys who are willing to give her money.
>> > 
>> > Good luck with whatever you decide to do.
> +1

I agree. However, this topic is more appropriate for PLUG-Talk now. I am
responding to Michael via private email at more length, won't here.

Regards,
Robert
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Re: [PLUG] A little something for everyone

[Robert Munro]

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On Sat, 5 Mar 2011 11:05:14 -0800 Alex Young 
wrote:
> 
> On Sat, Mar 5, 2011 at 10:42 AM, Bill Ensley  wrote:
> 
>> > Your post is offensive and discriminatory.
>> >
>> > I don't care what anyone else on this list says.
>> >
>> > -Bill Ensley
>> > www.bearprinting.com
>> >
>> > On 3/5/2011 9:32 AM, Brian Wood wrote:
>>> > > I'm looking to partner with G-dly people willing to use the
>>> > > C++ Middleware Writer -- an on line code generator that
>>> > > writes C++ marshalling code based on high-level user input.
>>> > > In exchange for using the C++ Middleware Writer, I'll donate
>>> > > 18 hours/week for six months to their project.  If you aren't
>>> > > an orthodox Jew or pro-life Christian, you can still get in on
>>> > > the action.  If you refer someone to me for this, I'll pay you
>>> > > $150/month for the first four months I work with them.
>>> > >
>> >
> I'd agree.
> 
> It's something like ironic bigotry given the subject of the email, and yeah,
> quite offensive, even to someone of neither group.
> 
> The offer of money here makes it look a lot like a job offer as Tim noted,
> and that makes it look a lot like a violation of employment law...
> 
I agree, Brian Wood's blatant religious discrimination has *absolutely*
no place on this mailing list. Please take the blatantly discriminatory
fundamentalism elsewhere, right now. I also agree that the offer should
be on the plug-jobs list, but I'll also object to discrimination there.

Let me be clear, if you're looking for someone who can help you use the
C++ code generator you're using, that's your only legitimate criterion
that you can legally advertise and use to determine who you might hire.

That also goes for any job posting you might log to the plug-jobs list.

Just to nail this point home, if anyone at all applies for that job you
have just advertised on this mailing list and they have some experience
coding successfully using C++ Middleware Writer but you don't hire them
for whatever reason, they will likely be able to sue you for employment
discrimination - unless they're a member of your own insular Christian
fundamentalist church - and win. Think of legal fees, then losing, too,
and having to pay someone a year or two years' salary for being a jerk.

Unfortunately for you, Woods, you've posted Exhibit A in an employment
discrimination lawsuit on a mailing list that is open to public access.

That means it's likely too late for you to discriminate against people
who might apply for that job, based on whether they share your bigotry.

Have a nice day,
Robert






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Re: [PLUG] Broken Sony Vaio PCG-691L

[Robert Munro]

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On Sat, 26 Feb 2011 18:26:03 -0800, John Jason Jordan
 wrote:
> 
> While visiting with a couple of friends this afternoon they showed me a
> Sony Vaio PCG-691L computer that is broken. The problem is that the
> power connector is kaput. The battery is currently dead, but they told
> me that even when it was charged the computer would not boot.

My daughter dropped off a Sony Vaio laptop several years ago that she'd
used at college, saying it wouldn't turn on anymore and she thought the
power switch might be broken. I never tried to get it fixed, because it
was about six years old by then and she didn't seem anxious about that.

But maybe it's just the power switch on your friends' Sony Vaio laptop.
If so, and Sony used the same switch for years, it might not cost much.

Robert

PS - If anyone wants a couple of old P3 laptops, that Sony Vaio and an
HP Omnibook 6000 with a dead hard drive are both *free* for the asking.


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Re: [PLUG] Internet addictions and technology

[Robert Munro]

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This probably belongs on Plug-talk, but I'll reply to you one time here.

I don't follow Plug-talk, btw. So if you want to reply please do so via
private email.

Truer words have never been written than "You can't legislate morality."

That also applies to trying to shut down those who profit from vices or
trying to censor the Internet as a whole, or even your own small corner
of it. The name "Portland" reveals that this has always been, and still
is, a seaport town. Think about that for a moment. If you read history,
you'll find that the term "Skid Road" was invented here when they were
still logging the West Hills, and only later it morphed into "Skid Row".

The stories about there having been tunnels beneath a few Old Town bars
that led directly to the waterfront are true. Many one-time loggers got
drunk downtown and woke up on a sailing voyage to Shanghai, China, thus
the term "Shanghaied". San Francisco was more flamboyant in its sinning
but Portland was perhaps just a little more businesslike, and discrete.

I won't go through the history, but suffice it to say that the Memorial
Coliseum was built over a red-light district that had flourished in the
Rose Quarter. Chinatown was once a nest of opium dens and Chinese clubs
mostly dedicated to gambling, and even the Lotus Cafe was at one time a
card club, a block away from the courthouse. Now it is just a lunchtime
cafe for lawyers, judges and juries, but as recently as the mid-1980s I
can recall that it was a dire dive where some drunk shot the bartender,
dead, .357 in the chest just for having told the guy to leave, earlier.

Then there was Bill's Gold Coin, the hooker bar just on the other side
of the facing block from Jakes restaurant, where there's a gay bar now,
or was the last time I looked. The upper floors were a gay 'bathhouse'.

Bud Clark was perhaps Portland's most honest and effective mayor in our
city's history, but consider that he got elected from running the Goose
Hollow Inn, which was a free for all venue for sex and drugs in the 70s
although he did close the place a bit early to encourage responsibility.

Bud Clark lost his first family to a drunk driver, but built the Goose,
so if you want to talk about society and morality you might look him up.

Neil Goldschmidt, on the other hand - Portland's golden boy of politics
and later Oregon Governor and US Secretary of Transportation - had been
fucking his underage neighbor girl while he was in office and continued
to do so for many years. You can sometimes run into him at Goose Hollow
but the woman died recently, a life ruined, and a very long awful story.

Goldschmidt's driver had an affair with his wife, but Bernie Giusto got
the job of Multnomah County Sheriff and he managed to hang on to it for
a long time. He was only forced to withdraw after much of this came out.

The fact is that in Oregon we live on the edge of a corrupt and failing
military industrial empire that's distracting us proles with irrelevant
sex and sports and advertising the tacky consumer gadgets made in China
and sold at Wal-Mart, and it's up to us to maintain a sense of morality.

Every bar you might walk into in Portland has lottery video poker, that
inexorable tax on the innumerate who can't figure out that they'll lose
over time by playing. That the State runs this is exceptionally odious,
but it's a tax on stupidity so I guess the losers deserve the fleecing.

There are stripper bars all over town, "gentlemen's clubs" where you'll
be welcome as long as you keep buying drinks and tipping dancers. There
are also sex clubs, I've heard. You can buy drugs in any downtown club,
and that's not new. It has been more or less the case forever, I think.

And yet, you want to worry about the best way of filtering the Internet
for yourself and your subscribers? Wake up, Michael, we're in Portland!

I think you need to get out more, and perhaps read some of our history.

The bottom line is how you choose to live your life. Want to wank it to
a video? Go ahead. Got a special lady friend you'd like to save it for?
You can do that instead. It's up to you. No women in your life? They're
over 50% of the population, and unlike China, there are girls your age,
and most importantly, you do not need to be the censor for anyone else.

If you have people asking you to censor the Internet, tell them that is
up to them. As in, if you don't want to see it, don't look. That is the
case in real life, and it also applies on the Internet. It's up to them
to live their life and you should not let them put in on you, not ever,
not for business accounts nor most especially for people's home systems.

Just take care of yourself and what you do in your own life, and allow
other people your respectful space to let them take care of themselves.

Best wishes,
Robert

On 02/14/2011 02:01 AM, Michael C. Robinson 
wrote:
> 
> On a non technical note, how do other people deal with addictive
> Internet conten

Re: [PLUG] Provider Recommendations Sought

[Robert Munro]

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On Fri, 11 Feb 2011 10:04:02 -0800 JM  wrote:
> 
> Finally fed up with Speakeasy, which used to be fine, pre-merger with 
> Megapath. Now I'm looking for solid DSL, with a couple fixed IP addresses 
> from someone (local or otherwise) that serves the Downtown/Pearl area.
> 
You didn't say what Speakeasy is doing that's pissed you off. I am
curious because that's my ISP and I haven't found problems with it.

This 1.5Mbps DSL link stays up 24/7/365, except for infrequent and brief
maintenance hits, and it seems reliable to me, since I use it
constantly, including for remote work at a website based in the UK.

I did notice some months ago that Speakeasy's DNS servers in Seattle
seemed to stop caching website URLs, so I'm running dnsmasq on my PC
behind my firewall, and that appears to be working.

Speakeasy has been owned by Best Buy (shudder) for a while now, but just
as long as my line works and it doesn't hike my rate, I'm fine with that.

So what's changed that is making you want to switch to another ISP?

Robert
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Re: [PLUG] firefox, updates, and SSL certificates

[Robert Munro]

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> On Mon, 20 Dec 2010 20:06:40 -0800 Keith Lofstrom wrote:
> 
> Does firefox retain added SSL certificates through updates?

Yes.

I used to edit at an obscure website but later fell out with the owner,
however I still have the CMS certificate in Firefox after upgrading it.

This assumes that you retain your /home/[userid]/.mozilla/* structures.

HTH,
Robert


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Re: [PLUG] memtest86: Help Needed

[Robert Munro]

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On Tue, Nov 2, 2010 at 09:32 AM, Galen Seitz wrote:

> I feel some sympathy for the memory manufacturers.  I'm sure there are 
> cases where they get blamed when the actual cause is a marginal 
> motherboard design.  I'm not saying that's the case here, I'm just 
> pointing out that there are two sides involved.

It does happen that a marginal or slightly flaky motherboard design can
cause intermittent memory errors.  I think it's happening on my desktop.

I built this with a motherboard that a friend gave me that someone else
didn't want, and this might be why.

I have one of the first edition Asus Crosshair motherboards with 2x 1GB
DDR2 800Mhz DIMMs of Crucial Ballistix Tracer memory.  Crucial replaced
those twice under the lifetime warranty because they wouldn't even POST.

(The Crucial memory was cheap, I think I paid about $30 for both DIMMs,
and that's the only reason I ended up with such gamer bling RAM sticks.)

The second time it sent me newer 2V DIMMs to replace the 2.2V originals
and I haven't had any further POST errors with these sticks since then.

However, every few days to few weeks, I'm getting random memory errors,
which don't seem to follow any specific pattern.  In memtest86+ testing
it sometimes fails fairly quickly and sometimes later during block move
tests.  Maybe the memory is degrading, but I suspect that it's actually
a slightly flaky motherboard design, maybe the Nvidia controller chips.

Every time I get these memory errors, turning off the system for awhile
then rebooting seems to resolve the problem, then memtest86+ runs fine.

I doubt that this is the sort of problem Rich is having, but it happens.

I agree that Rich should exchange the memory, and that'll likely fix it.

However I'm probably looking for a new motherboard, and some ECC memory.

Robert


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Re: [PLUG] Position of swap partition

[Robert Munro]

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On 10/27/2010 Rich Shepard  wrote:

> Does it matter what partition is formatted as swap on a drive? On my new
> hard drive I've made 3 partitions, and think I should redo it because I made
> /dev/sda1 the swap, /dev/sda2 will be /, and /dev/sda3 will be /tmp. I'm
> thinking I should repartition so the sequence is /, swap, /tmp.

Overall, why do you want just one partition for everything?  There are
good reasons to partition separate logical drives for different roles.

I agree that you shouldn't need to use a swap partition.  I have a few
on various disks but seldom see them in use.  I put other disks first.

However, I might offer some further comments on partitioning, if I may.

First, unless you're running a web and/or database server that makes a
lot of use of /tmp for static files, relational query results sets, or
whatever, you shouldn't need a physical /tmp partition at all.  Use an
entry in /etc/fstab instead to create an in-memory /tmp at every boot:

none /tmp tmpfs defaults 0 0

I happen to have a physical /tmp partition on this desktop system just
because it has got a ridiculous amount of hard disk space for my needs
and, with an Apache instance and Mysql plus a load of ordinary desktop
applications, it's just 79MB in size, a snip if you've got GBs of RAM.

Sure, something could run amok filling up your in-core /tmp partition,
locking up your system, but I do not recall that ever happening to me.

Second, why don't you want to have a separate /home partition?  That's a
good idea for backups, scrubbing deleted files, and carrying forward
your user configuration over software upgrades.  Having your own /home
partition keeps a lot of disk activity separate from your system files
in the root partition and applications software which resides in /usr.

Speaking of which, having a separate /usr partition seems like a great
idea to me, too.  The stuff in the root "/" partition doesn't change a
lot with distro updates, but /usr gets a lot of activity over time, if
you accept the software upgrades the better distros put out regularly.

A /usr partition is a good idea, too.  The hint is in the above advice
regarding the relative levels of activity between software partitions.

You can force things like Adobe Reader and Google Earth to install on
/usr with the link command (assuming there's nothing already in /opt):

ln -sf /usr/local /opt

It's also a good idea, I think, to have a separate /var partition, as
that gets a lot of activity, too.  I also have a /boot partition just to
be able mark it read-only if I get paranoid, but that's a bit much.

Here's what I've got at the moment:

FilesystemSize  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda6 433M  211M  200M  52% /
/dev/sda14 21G  6.3G   13G  33% /data
/dev/sda5  61M   28M   30M  49% /boot
/dev/sda7 1.5G  929M  577M  62% /home
/dev/sda114.0G   79M  3.7G   3% /tmp
/dev/sda105.0G  3.6G  1.2G  76% /usr
/dev/sda9 2.5G  167M  2.2G   7% /var
/dev/sda12 20G  194M   19G   2% /var/lib/mysql
/dev/sda13 20G  216M   19G   2% /var/www

Yes, I use all logical drives, defined in a secondary partition table.

However, do whatever seems right to you, of course.  And, best wishes.

HTTH,
Robert

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Re: [PLUG] Questioning Mozilla Plugins

[Robert Munro]

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On 10/21/2010 10:02:07 -0700 (PDT), Rich Shepard wrote:
> 
>In ~/.mozilla/plugins I see a bunch of files with an .xpt extension and
> shared libraries dating from 2006.

Your mplayerplugin files should be replaced every time you install an
updated version of the mplayer package. If you have backlevel versions
of those, they might cause problems. (On the other hand, some of them
might not have been changed, however you never know. Best update 'em.)

However, at least on the Mandriva that I've been using, those mplayer
files don't often change between releases.  The Java link has changed,
but the flashplayer plugin location doesn't, even when that's updated.

Here's what I've got in /usr/local/firefox/plugins :

lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root 39 2010-10-19 17:40 libflashplayer.so ->
/usr/lib/flash-plugin/libflashplayer.so*
lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root 42 2010-10-19 17:35 libnpjp2.so ->
/usr/java/jre1.6.0_22/lib/i386/libnpjp2.so*
- -rwxr-xr-x  1 root root  15716 2010-10-12 11:55 libnullplugin.so*
- -rwxr-xr-x  1 root root 283484 2010-04-03 16:44 mplayerplug-in-dvx.so*
- -rwxr-xr-x  1 root root   1067 2010-04-03 16:44 mplayerplug-in-dvx.xpt*
- -rwxr-xr-x  1 root root 283484 2010-04-03 16:44 mplayerplug-in-gmp.so*
- -rwxr-xr-x  1 root root   1067 2010-04-03 16:44 mplayerplug-in-gmp.xpt*
- -rwxr-xr-x  1 root root 283484 2010-04-03 16:44 mplayerplug-in-qt.so*
- -rwxr-xr-x  1 root root   1067 2010-04-03 16:44 mplayerplug-in-qt.xpt*
- -rwxr-xr-x  1 root root 283484 2010-04-03 16:44 mplayerplug-in-rm.so*
- -rwxr-xr-x  1 root root   1067 2010-04-03 16:44 mplayerplug-in-rm.xpt*
- -rwxr-xr-x  1 root root 283480 2010-04-03 16:44 mplayerplug-in.so*
- -rwxr-xr-x  1 root root 283484 2010-04-03 16:44 mplayerplug-in-wmp.so*
- -rw-r--r--  1 root root   1067 2010-04-03 16:44 mplayerplug-in-wmp.xpt
- -rw-r--r--  1 root root   1067 2010-04-03 16:44 mplayerplug-in.xpt
- -rwxr-xr-x  1 root root 179552 2010-10-21 17:29 nppdf.so*

When I update to a new release of firefox, I copy it all to ~./plugins
then copy it back. My firefox browser and all these plugins work great.

If Mandriva catches up (it has happened), then I just copy all that to
the plugins directory under the official location and delete the local
directory tree.

HTH,
Robert

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Re: [PLUG] Is anyone running Linux on an IBM Thinkpad T41 or T42?

[Robert Munro]

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Thank you all for your replies.  An IBM T4x Thinkpad is sounding good.

Regards,
Robert

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[PLUG] Is anyone running Linux on an IBM Thinkpad T41 or T42?

[Robert Munro]

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My HP Omnibook 6000 died yesterday.  Apparently the hard disk failed as
the Setup program shows Hard Disk [None] and pulling it out, staring at
it and reseating it didn't help, of course.

Salvage resellers are selling some refurbished IBM Thinkpad T41 and T42
notebooks on Ebay, which seem to be selling for a little more than $100
at auction.  These systems have 1.6GHz Pentium M CPUs, 512MB of RAM and
20GB or 40GB hard drives, 14-inch SVGA 1024x768 screens, CD/DVD-writers
and built-in 56K modems, ethernet NICs, etc.  Just big screen netbooks.

Is anyone running Linux successfully on one of these older IBM Thinkpad
models?  I'll be interested to hear about any experiences and problems.

Regards,
Robert


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Re: [PLUG] Where To Install PHP PostgreSQL Driver?

[Robert Munro]

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Hash: SHA1

On 09/26/2010 08:46:06 -0700 (PDT) Rich Shepard
 wrote:
> 
>Second, I was going to use drupal but it's inappropriate for our needs.
> That is a good tool for sites heavy on user contributions, frequent changes
> (e.g., news, shopping), and with hundreds to thousands of pages. It's not
> the right CMS for a professional services firm whose Web site is essentially
> a digital brochure.
> 
Might I suggest Wordpress for that sort of site?  It is easy to install
and upgrade, I've found, from what fooling around I have done with that.

I have Wordpress on my desktop (!) running behind my firewall box under
Mandriva, which seems to have a good LAMP stack (hey, I got it working).

There are lots of free themes and I have been running vanilla Wordpress
for about 18 months without getting hacked, though I've seen many tries.

Just a thought,
Robert
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Re: [PLUG] Centos upgrade trouble...

[Robert Munro]

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On 09/08/2010 06:34 PM, plug-requ...@lists.pdxlinux.org wrote:
> Okay folks, how do I stop this?  I have NOZEROCONF=yes
> in /etc/sysconfig/network.

Try adding NOZEROCONF=yes to the ifcfg-ethX file(s) for your network
interface(s).

HTH,
Robert


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Re: [PLUG] Can't get Java plugin...

[Robert Munro]

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On 07/20/2010 01:18 AM, Someone  wrote:
> Can't get Java plugin...
>  
> and firefox 3.6.4 on CentOS 5.5 to work together.
> 
> Where is the global plugins directory anyway?
> 
On my system, Firefox installs to /usr/lib/firefox-3.6.6/ and I just add
a plugins subdirectory under that.  As of about Firefox 3.6.4 the name
of the Java plugin changed.  Here's the output of an ls command:

libnpjp2.so -> /usr/java/jre1.6.0_18/lib/i386/libnpjp2.so*

HTH,
Robert

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Re: [PLUG] Linux Clinic Sunday Dec 20 1pm

[Robert Munro]

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On Fri, 18 Dec 2009 13:08:27 -0800, Tony Rick  wrote:
> 
> On Fri, Dec 18, 2009 at 12:20 PM, John Jason Jordan wrote:
> 
>> > On Thu, 17 Dec 2009 18:00:48 -0800
>> > John Jason Jordan  dijo:
>> >
>>> > >On Thu, 17 Dec 2009 16:19:00 -0800
>>> > >Keith Lofstrom  dijo:
>>> > >
 > >>December 20 2009 Linux Clinic, Sunday at 1PM to 5PM.
 > >>Free Geek, 1731 SE 10th, 3 blocks south of Hawthorne.
>>> > >
>>> > >Keith's formal announcement reminded me that I needed to update the
>>> > >distros that I have on my USB drive.
>> >
>> > OK, below is a "ls -Rla > list.txt" of the USB Drive (edited).
>> >
>> > If I didn't include a distro that you would like a copy of, let me
>> > know. The USB drive still has 35 GB free.
> 
> What?  No LinuxMint? No Scientific Linux?

He's got Mint, but I might be curious about Scientific Linux, too.

And no Mandriva?  That's what I use and I find it better than Ubuntu.
It's available at kernel.org and 2008.1 through 2010.0 are all great.

Robert


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Re: [PLUG] Mandriva 2010

[Robert Munro]

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On Mon, Nov 9, 2009 at 5:13 PM, David Kaplan  wrote:

> It seems that nobody here uses Mandriva. The new version 2010 is quite
> nice.
> It's equal to Ubuntu, which I use as well.
>
> Give it a try... http://distrowatch.com/?newsid=05749
>
> The KDE version is the best I've seen. And I'm a Gnome user overall.
>
> Dave

I've used Mandriva almost exclusively for years, after trying an early
Red Hat, with occasional trials of SuSE, Ubuntu, even Gentoo (briefly).
The Free version is complete, including even non-free graphics drivers.

It's gotten steadily, incrementally better over the years. I am running
2009.1 on this desktop but have 2010.0 on two small backup hard drives,
both the Gnome and KDE versions. I'm still testing but will choose one.

Mandriva has a more sophisticated installation procedure than Ubuntu, I
believe, and the system administration functions are more comprehensive
as well. It's always been user friendly, but this release is very solid.

The software package manager is as good or better than Ubuntu's Synaptic
in my opinion. There is a full set of good hardware configuration tools,
network tools, system administration tools, local disk partitioning and
sharing, firewall and security administration, monitoring and auditing,
and boot management. Mandriva keeps adding, refining these capabilities.

Robert






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Re: [PLUG] post-partition, after setup question

[Robert Munro]

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On Fri, 30 Oct 2009 at 6:28 PM, Randy Stapilus 
wrote:

> Thanks to those who helped with my partition/mounting question. Now,  
> with Linux installed, I have another once.
> 
> I got through that process and set up the dual boot. Windows appears  
> to function properly. And so did Linux Mint - until a couple of  
> minutes ago. I was able to get around the OS, reconfigure a few  
> things (like desktop appearance), get on line with Firefox,  download  
> and open an app (scribus). But then I got an error message indicating  
> an issue with authorization (this after I had already loaded in  
> scribus). I logged out, and now when I try to log in I get this:
> 
> "GDM could not write to your authorization file. This could mean you  
> are out of disk space or that your home directory could not be opened  
> for writing. In any case it is not possible to log in. Please contact  
> your system administrator."
> 
> Any suggestions what I should do now?

You can boot into single-user mode by appending "failsafe" (without the
quotes) to the boot command.  Some distributions term it Safe Mode, and
you might already have a boot choice set up in your boot menu for this.

You may have to login as root (userid "root"), with your root password.

The df command will show how much free space remains on each partition,
and if that shows 0 in the Avail column for your home partition then it
is the problem, that is, your /home partition somehow got all filled up.

If you have free space in your /home partition, then you can check that
you still have permission to write to your userid directory there, with
the ls -al /home/userid command, where 'userid' is your userid literal.

If your userid is "rxs" the command would be: ls -al /home/rxs

The directory listing should look something like this:

drwxr-xr-x  57 rxs  rxs   12288 2009-10-30 19:11 ./
drwxr-xr-x   4 root root   4096 2009-10-21 15:05 ../
- -rw-rw-r--   1 rxs  rxs  24 2009-03-16 01:19 .somehiddenfile
- -rw-rw-r--   1 rxs  rxs NNN YEAR-MM-DD HH:MM somenothiddenfile

The important line is the top one, the entry for your own home directory
that starts with ./ on the right.  The third and fourth columns are your
home directory owner and group.  If they're not your userid that is your
problem.

If somehow your ownership of your home directory got changed, you should
be able to change it back running as the root user, by using the command
chown rxs:rxs /home/rxs (change "rxs" to your real userid throughout).

If your issue isn't one of these problems, try to post more information.

Robert



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Re: [PLUG] google docs

[Robert Munro]

> On Tue, 28 Jul 2009, at 02:45 PM, TedKubaska wrote:
> 
> So I thought I'd bring this up on PLUG to see if anyone else has encountered 
> this issue and has any experience or opinion. And I appreciate the input. 
> 
> -ted 
> On Jul 27, 2009, at 4:30 PM, Larry W wrote: 
> 
> TedKubaska wrote: 
> Agents tell him that he can only sell those FNASR if the work has never been 
> published anywhere else. 
> 
> I'm not a lawyer, but using Google Docs for the purpose for which it is 
> intended - the creating, storing and editing of written works - does not 
> mean they have been published. I believe the literal definition is to 
> make the work available to the public in some fashion. It could also 
> mean that allowing you to view the work it is in some fashion published 
> and so cannot be sold. He should ask the agents to clarify their 
> statement with regard to Google Docs. 
> 
> Larry 
> 

IANAL, but I'd say the answer depends entirely upon whether Google Docs
makes his text publicly available.  If so, that is publishing.  If not,
and possibly with appropriate safeguards both info-security and couched
in legal language, then... maybe not.

Your friend needs to talk with *his* lawyer about this.  Even if all he
spends to 'hire' that lawyer about this is a lunch, or round of drinks.

Robert



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Re: [PLUG] terabyte upgrade

[Robert Munro]

On Wed, 03 Jun 2009 at 12:59:32, Eric Wheeler wrote:
> 
> On Wed, 2009-06-03 at 12:52 -0700, Daniel Herrington wrote:
> > 350W Antec Basiq PSU
> > MSI motherboard w/ onboard video
> > 1.2 gb ram
> > 2 300 gb Drives
> > 1 36 GB dirve
> > 1 DVD burner
> 
> Power supplies run near optimal at ~80% of specification.  Running
> them well below spec wastes lots of power and heat in switching.

I wouldn't advise you to try to make do with an undersized power supply.

Last year I had to buy a couple of power supplies because what is now my
old socket A firewall box suffered a catastrophic cascading failure that
blew up its power supply (along with the motherboard, CPU, SCSI card and
one disk drive), and I used that as an excuse to build out a new machine
in addition to fixing the old one.

Trawling the net to figure out what I needed I found a couple of reviews
and some other information.  Search and ye shall find, but the upshot is
that modern solid-state switching power supplies are most efficient near
60-65% of rated capacity, with far lower efficiency when lightly loaded,
as well as closer to full capacity.

So, you don't want to go overboard and put a big 750W extreme gaming rig
power supply in a system built with a low-TDP CPU chip and onboard video
but neither do you want to skimp on the power supply if you are building
a system with a 95W-120W processor and a power sucking PCI-e video card,
several disk drives, a DVD drive and maybe a sound and/or TV tuner card.

A high-quality power supply that's strong enough to easily handle all of
the kit you might ever put in the box is perhaps the best investment for
long-term reliability you can make when building a new system, or fixing
up an old one.  Stable, ripple-free voltages that stay up to spec count.

There's a pretty good power supply calculator here - use the 'lite' one:

http://extreme.outervision.com/psucalculator.jsp 

I ended up with an Antec 500W Basiq PSU for the old firewall box, 'cause
there was a rebate.  And I bought a 650W Antec TPIII for the new system,
which has an Athlon64 X2 5600 with an ATI HD3870 video card, a SCSI card
with two small 10K RPM drives, plus a larger SATA drive and a DVD drive.

Hope that helps,
Robert
 




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Re: [PLUG] IPtables internal port forwarding

[Robert Munro]

On Thu, 2009-05-07 at 11:47 Michael Rasmussen wrote:
> As the OP here's the background story.
> 
> At work we manage several thousand switches and routers.
> We're replacing our management platform with a new one.
> There is an internal requirement to NEVER use clear text protocols.
> 
> So to put a new IOS image on a Cisco device we use SCP.
> 
> The new management app has two features:
>   it has the Cisco devices pull configs, images, everything
>   its default port for serving these resources is 8022
> 
> Complicating factors:
> 
> The Cisco devices cannot be configured to SCP to a different port than
> 22[1]
> We do normal management via ssh - aka port 22
> 
> In order to not confuse the beejesus out of all the groups that
> currently ssh
> to boxes we are loath to move SSH to a non-standard port.
> 
> Therefore:
> 
> We want to have the incoming port 22 connection from switches and
> routers (we
> know the IPs involved) redirected to port 8022 to connect with the
> management
> app software.
> 
> 
> [1] If you know otherwise and how, please share.
> 
> -- 
>  Michael Rasmussen

This isn't a shoestring operation, so you should be able to throw a bit
of relatively cheap hardware at the situation to simplify the issue and
simultaneously make your life easier and maintain great network service
levels for both the remote network hardware boxes and your human users.

You can't change the port that the switches / routers access to download
their software, you say.  But you CAN change the IP address they attempt
to connect with to do so.  So, just route their traffic through a simple
front-end firewall box to perform the port translation that solves this.

You'll need another little firewall with two NICs, plus another NIC card
in your main configuration server that handles both the automated router
and switch traffic plus ad-hoc SSH connections from the customer groups.

ASCII art:
___
router/switch --> new firewall --> eth1 |  |
|   Configuration Server   |
the customers --> old firewall --> eth0 |__|


The new outer firewall uses IPtables Prerouting rules (thousands of 'em)
to change the destination port from 22 to 8022, and one Forward rule to
route those packets to your configuration server's new second IP address
on its new interface eth1.

The old outer firewall passes the same old port 22 traffic right through
to the configuration server's same old IP address on old interface eth0.

This will avoid slowing network traffic for everyone by forcing each and
every packet to traverse thousands of new IPtables rules in the existing
firewall.

With streamlining of established connection packets, you can likely also
make this sort of configuration perform fairly well for the dumb routers
and switches too.

Hope this helps!
Robert



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Re: [PLUG] Calling ~/.Xmodmap in Xubuntu

[Robert Munro]

On Sun, 2009-04-19 at 12:00 Rich Shepard wrote:

>Since the Toshiba boots into runlevel 5 with no login required,
> where
> should I place a call to .Xmodmap so the key functions are swapped
> each time
> the system is booted?

Does Xubuntu have /etc/rc.d/rc.local?  That is meant for such trivial
local startup tasks. I use that to link various Xsession error files
to /dev/null at every reboot, for example.

Robert


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Re: [PLUG] CSS file name curiosity

[Robert Munro]

On Sat, 2009-04-18 at 12:00 Michael Rasmussen wrote:
> I was viewing the source to a web page I retrieved and saw
>  href="/sites/default/files/css/04b371acb6269192bb0f071989867540.css"
> />

That's a Drupal website's theme CSS cache that it builds from the CSS
inheritance hierarchy.  It contains all the CSS code that's in effect.

If you install the Firebug add-on in Firefox you can inspect all page
elements to see CSS directives.  You would not want to try to read the
file because it's just an extremely dense dump of all of the CSS code.

Robert



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Re: [PLUG] PLUG New Mail Log Issue

[Robert Munro]

On Thu, 2009-04-09 at 06:07, Rich Shepard wrote:
> 
>The past few days the following (with different numbers and IDs)
> has shown
> up in the logwatch summary:
> 
>   - sendmail Begin 
> 
>   SEVERE ERRORS
>   -
> 
>   System Error Messages:
>   savemail: cannot save rejected email anywhere: 2 Time(s)
> 
>   Lost Queue Files:
>   ./qfn38BeXMZ021496: savemail panic
>   ./qfn38721d8018551: savemail panic
> 
>   Total SEVERE ERRORS:  4
> 
>   -- sendmail End -
> 
>I've not seen anything like this before and would like some insight
> into
> what it means. I never knew that rejected mail was supposed to be
> saved, so
> I cannot make sense of this.
> 
>Any ideas?

Have you suffered a power outage recently?  That looks like it might be
due to orphan inodes getting dropped during recovery after a power cut.

Robert


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Re: [PLUG] AMD motherboard w/HDMI

[Robert Munro]

I'd look for a motherboard with an Intel or AMD chipset if I were you.

As Charlie Demerjian said at The Inquirer today, "Nvidia chipsets are
not only buggier than the mattress of a third-world prostitute, but
their Linux drivers are barely functional if you can find them."

http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/583/1051583/nehalem-proves-server-mettle
 

Admittedly Charlie dislikes Nvidia, but I happen to have a machine with
a Nvidia chipset, an Asus Crosshair with the Nvidia C51/MCP55 chipset,
and it's got a memory controller bug.  When that system gets powered off
and turned back on, it won't detect the 2G of Crucial PC6400 DRAM in it.
I have to open the case and put in a 512MB stick of PC5300 to reset the
BIOS DRAM settings, then put the Crucial DRAM back in to get it to boot.

However, other than that minor problem, the motherboard seems to work.
It was free from a friend, but I'd get something else if I were buying.

Robert

On Sun, 29 Mar 2009 at 7:15 PM, Matt Rae  wrote:

> I have a Shuttle SN78SH7 which is a barebones computer rather than a
> motherboard. http://global.shuttle.com/product_detail.jsp?PI=939 The
> Shuttle uses the Nvidia 8200 chipset and includes HDMI out. I'm
> currently using the HDMI audio/video with Boxee on Ubuntu. Looks like
> if you just want a motherboard, the ASUS M3N78-VM would be similar.
> http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131318
>
> Matt

>> On Sun, Mar 29, 2009 at 4:27 PM, rich  wrote:
>> I am going to try to build a computer, and one of the motherboards I
>> am
>> looking at has an HDMI plug on it. Does Ubuntu support HDMI? It would
>> be
>> nice if I were working with video, but other than that I cant't see a
>> need for it.
>> Rich


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Re: [PLUG] Logs and Reporting ... Again (Rich Shepard)

[Robert Munro]

> Date: Tue, 24 Mar 2009 06:04:48 -0700 (PDT)
> From: Rich Shepard 
> Subject: [PLUG] Logs and Reporting ... Again

>Something broke here and I've no idea where to look. Not all scripts in
> /etc/cron.daily are being run (specifically 1pflogsumm) while 0logwatch,
> logrotate, slocate and (presumably) others do run.
> 
>I activated the 1pflogsumm in root's crontab, but now that's apparently
> not running, either. At least, I'm not seeing the summary reports in my
> inbox each morning.
> 
>What's the appropriate approach to identifying the problem so it can be
> fixed?
> 
> Rich
> 

If you're not receiving any mail from cron jobs, you might want to check
the permissions on your mail spool file, such as:

/var/spool/mail/rshepard (or whatever is your own userid on the system).

On my system, they would look like:

-rw-r--r-- 1 rshepard mail 0 2009-03-24 06:17 /var/spool/mail/rshepard .

If something changed the permissions from 644 as above to 640 or 600, it
could block your local mail handler (like postfix) from writing to that.

Robert




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