- WLUG - wlug.mailman3.com

GRUB failure
by Richard Klein 16 Feb '20

16 Feb '20

The other day, my computer crashed to a blank, black screen. On reboot, my BIOS didn't see the SSD that held my OS. I tried swapping the SSD onto different cables and different motherboard connectors. When I started the computer back up, it saw the SSD, but gave me a GRUB rescue prompt. On the next reboot, the BIOS again didn't see the SSD. That's repeatable: warm boots make the SSD disappear; it re-appears on cold boots, but dumps me to the GRUB rescue prompt. I figured the SSD has died and I already requested an RMA, but I can't boot to my Windows drive if I remove the SSD, so maybe it's not actually dead. I don't have the patience to troubleshoot from the GRUB rescue prompt and I wasn't thrilled with Manjaro, so I'm going to try to install good, old Debian to the SSD while I wait to hear back about an RMA. -- Rich

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Reminder: Meeting tonight! Topic: TBD! Open Forum, etc.
by Tim Keller 13 Feb '20

13 Feb '20

Hey Everybody, We've got a meeting tonight! Location: WPI Campus Center Room 304 (Peterson Conference Room) Topic: TBD, open forum, etc. I'm going to show off Visual Studio Code for Linux running on my laptop with the emacs, git and python integrations I've been using. That'll probably be pretty quick and then we can open it up to a general discussion around what's going on in linux, what people are interested in and what people would like to see for topics. There will possibly be some new people since I've created the Meetup site. Snacks and refreshments will be provided and we'll head off for dinner afterwards. Later, Tim. -- I am leery of the allegiances of any politician who refers to their constituents as "consumers".

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Meeting today
by Joshua Stone 13 Feb '20

13 Feb '20

Hey all, I'm sorry to say that I won't be able to attend today's meeting because I have some last minute errands to do. Sorry about that! - Josh

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Topics for upcoming meetings..
by Tim Keller 11 Feb '20

11 Feb '20

I've got some updates and ideas for the upcoming meetings! I've reached out to Daniel Moghimi about doing a talk regarding his work on the various security issues he's found in modern CPUs. He's agreed to speak either March or April. I'll work to finalize the details with him. I'm definitely interested in doing a Keysigning party, we'll just have to work out the logistics and what additional presentations that we'd like to go along with it. I know a while a go Eric Martin showed off a cool keyfob that had his key stored in it. I recently stumbled across a cool technology called "Node Red" which people are using to do automation stuff with IoT and MTQQ. https://www.nodered.org It allows you to create flows using their graphing engine. Another piece of software that people might find interesting is subsonic <http://www.subsonic.org/>. It lets you run your own music streaming service. This way you're not subjected to whatever algorithm spotify / pandora / etc wants to subject you to! I recently helped a buddy build a home nas to run it and it's pretty damn slick. Let me know if you have any more ideas for meeting topics! Later, Tim. -- I am leery of the allegiances of any politician who refers to their constituents as "consumers".

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Retro-puters
by Mike Peckar 11 Feb '20

11 Feb '20

Some fun reads on retro projects in links to hackaday. I wasn't aware of the book mentioned... https://boingboing.net/2020/02/04/766826.html

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sorry about the spam
by Chuck Anderson 10 Feb '20

10 Feb '20

Sorry about the spam. I'm cleaning up spam from the moderator's queue and accidently accepted a 8 or 12 messages.

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Reminder: WLUG Meeting Next Week! Topic: Modernizing the Linux Desktop
by Tim Keller 09 Feb '20

09 Feb '20

Hey Gang, This is my usual reminder that we've got a meeting next week. Here's the details... Date & Time: February 13th, 2020 @ 7PM Location: WPI Campus Center Room 304 (Peterson Conference Room) Presenter: Joshua Stone Topic: Modernizing the Linux Desktop with Silver/Blue, Toolbox and Flatpak Our speaker this month is Joshua Stone. He's going to giving a talk about a couple of cool technologies in Fedora! Josh provided me some details about these innovations so I've mashed them up and included them below. Silverblue: https://fedoramagazine.org/what-is-silverblue/ Toolbox: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/fedora-silverblue/toolbox/ Flatpaks: https://flatpak.org/ *Silverblue* s a Fedora variant designed around immutability where a new system image is committed as the new /sysroot without affecting the state of the running system. This is reminiscent of Android A/B updates, although the update backend -- ostree -- has elements of a version control system like git. *Toolbox* is also interesting as it lets you switch into an unprivileged development environment that can be built up and torn down without affecting the host as tools are installed inside a container. *Flatpak* uses the same file storage backend as Silverblue to manage apps and shared runtimes. This app distribution technology allows you to decouple apps and operating systems as everything is built and run inside a sandbox, making upgrades easier. Compare needing only one version of an app to package as a flatpak, versus packaging for different versions. As usual, snacks and refreshments will be provided and afterwards we'll head off for dinner to continue the conversation. Thanks, Tim Keller WLUG President -- I am leery of the allegiances of any politician who refers to their constituents as "consumers".

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Favorite email client for Linux these days?
by Tim Keller 29 Jan '20

29 Jan '20

Per the conversation regarding pgp, it got me thinking about my "email flow" Currently I'm using gmail in a browser, but I realize that unless I want to install a 3rd party add-on for chrome I can't really do PGP. What are people using for mail clients on linux? Later, Tim. -- I am leery of the allegiances of any politician who refers to their constituents as "consumers".

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Future Meeting idea...Zombie Load Attack
by Tim Keller 27 Jan '20

27 Jan '20

I saw that one of the researchers for the https://zombieloadattack.com/ Zombie Load attack is working on a Ph.d at WPI! Would this be something that people might be interested in? If so I'll reach out and see if he'd like to give a talk at WLUG. Later, Tim. -- I am leery of the allegiances of any politician who refers to their constituents as "consumers".

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It never ends...
by Tim Keller 27 Jan '20

27 Jan '20

https://zombieloadattack.com/ -- I am leery of the allegiances of any politician who refers to their constituents as "consumers".

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