Re: [GTALUG] Brand-name desktop recommendation?

[Howard Gibson via talk]

William,

   I did not know that HP had a quality problem.  I regularly tell people I 
hate Hewlett Packard printers.  The printer paper must pass over a roller at 
the back, which seems to be quite a bend in the paper.  This works fine with 
paper, but it is not reliable at printing heavier material like business card 
stock or photo paper.  Otherwise, my HP6940 works fine.

On Fri, 10 Nov 2017 23:58:11 -0500
William Park via talk  wrote:

> I've been asked by few people about which desktop to buy.  They are
> technical enough to swap components, but definitely don't have time to
> troubleshoot.  They have more important things to do.  So, I said any
> brand, new or refurbished, except HP.
> 
> Things may have changed, and HP may be good now.  Which brand would you
> recommend for desktop computer for business people?
> -- 
> William Park 
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-- 
Howard Gibson 
hgib...@eol.ca
jhowardgib...@gmail.com
http://home.eol.ca/~hgibson
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[GTALUG] Brand-name desktop recommendation?

[William Park via talk]

I've been asked by few people about which desktop to buy.  They are
technical enough to swap components, but definitely don't have time to
troubleshoot.  They have more important things to do.  So, I said any
brand, new or refurbished, except HP.

Things may have changed, and HP may be good now.  Which brand would you
recommend for desktop computer for business people?
-- 
William Park 
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Re: [GTALUG] Fan Control on Linux

[Kevin Cozens via talk]

On 2017-11-10 03:31 PM, Giles Orr via talk wrote:
I have a very old laptop I'm trying to rehabilitate and use with Debian: 
it's got an AMD Turion chip and 1G of RAM.  Works fine.  But one annoying 
problem under Linux: the fan runs flat out all the time.Â


If the fan connection to the MB is only two pins it may not have the ability 
to operate at anything other than full speed. Check the MB manual. As this 
is a laptop you may find it hard to locate information about fan control.


You could add a circuit to do variable speed control of the fan but it may 
be difficult, if not impossible, to fit it in to the laptop case.


--
Cheers!

Kevin.

http://www.ve3syb.ca/   |"Nerds make the shiny things that distract
Owner of Elecraft K2 #2172  | the mouth-breathers, and that's why we're
| powerful!"
#include  | --Chris Hardwick
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[GTALUG] Fan Control on Linux

[Giles Orr via talk]

I have a very old laptop I'm trying to rehabilitate and use with Debian:
it's got an AMD Turion chip and 1G of RAM.  Works fine.  But one annoying
problem under Linux: the fan runs flat out all the time.  If the 'sensors'
command is correct, the CPU has never gone above 35C, so the fan isn't
running like that because of the heat.

I also used this machine recently to run Darik's Boot And Nuke (aka "DBAN")
on a hard drive: that's a Linux kernel, and the fan wasn't running full
out.  Not sure what that proves, except that the fan doesn't have to run
full out under a Linux kernel.

I've installed "lm_sensors," I've installed "fancontrol", I've run
'lmsensors-detect' (which is 'sensors-detect' under Fedora and Ubuntu -
I've tried three Linux OSes with essentially identical results).  I've run
'pwmconfig' which tells me "There are no pwm-capable sensor modules
installed."  I've written a file into /etc/sensors.d/fan-speed-control.conf
that said this:

chip "k8temp-pci-*"
set fan1_div 4

(This last at the suggestion of ArchWiki, which says reducing the fan
multiplier can make it accessible to Linux.)  But running 'sensors -s' to
reload the config is greeted with "Error: File
/etc/sensors.d/fan-speed-control.conf, line 2: Unknown feature name
k8temp-pci-00c3: No such subfeature known."  On an off-chance I tried
"fan0_div" and "fan2_div" but same answer.  This has exhausted most of the
mainstream remedies suggested by Google.  At this point I'm stumped: can
anyone else suggest ways to get a handle on this fan?

-- 
Giles
https://www.gilesorr.com/
giles...@gmail.com
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[GTALUG] Canonical looking for an SRE

[Jamon Camisso via talk]

We're looking for an SRE to fill an open position.

Work is home based and the team spans APAC, EMEA, and Americas.

https://ldd.tbe.taleo.net/ldd03/ats/careers/requisition.jsp?org=CANONICAL=1=1300

If you're interested give me a shout offlist and I'll see about making
sure the right people are involved in screening :)

Cheers, Jamon
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[GTALUG] suggestion: disable fprintd

[D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk]

fprintd(1) handles finger-print recognition for some kind of 
authentication (logins and who knows what else).

At least on my current Fedora and CentOS systems, fprintd is automatically 
enabled.  I don't know about other systems.

Most of my systems have no fingerprint hardware, so the only effect is to 
polute the log.  Here's an example:

Nov 10 10:30:14 redface-mimosa-com dbus-daemon[637]: dbus[637]: [system] 
Activating via systemd: service name='net.reactivated.Fprint' 
unit='fprintd.service'
Nov 10 10:30:14 redface-mimosa-com dbus[637]: [system] Activating via systemd: 
service name='net.reactivated.Fprint' unit='fprintd.service'
Nov 10 10:30:14 redface-mimosa-com systemd[1]: Starting Fingerprint 
Authentication Daemon...
Nov 10 10:30:14 redface-mimosa-com dbus[637]: [system] Successfully activated 
service 'net.reactivated.Fprint'
Nov 10 10:30:14 redface-mimosa-com dbus-daemon[637]: dbus[637]: [system] 
Successfully activated service 'net.reactivated.Fprint'
Nov 10 10:30:14 redface-mimosa-com systemd[1]: Started Fingerprint 
Authentication Daemon.
Nov 10 10:30:14 redface-mimosa-com fprintd[28994]: Launching FprintObject
Nov 10 10:30:14 redface-mimosa-com fprintd[28994]: D-Bus service launched with 
name: net.reactivated.Fprint
Nov 10 10:30:14 redface-mimosa-com fprintd[28994]: entering main loop

Nov 10 10:30:45 redface-mimosa-com fprintd[28994]: No devices in use, exit

This happens every once in a while.  I don't know what triggers it.  Perhaps 
logins.

I have a machine or two with fingerprint hardware.  One scary effect is to 
compromise security -- fingerprints are probably easy to fake.  This is 
only a problem if someone has enrolled in the fprintd system.  Otherwise
there is neither risk nor reward

So: in both cases, it is probably a good idea to:
sudo systemctl disable fprintd

PS: I think that calling this fprintd instead of fingerprintd is a bit
confusing.  I used to assume these entries were about printing.
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