Re: DECStation 3100 on a RPi2040...
by Jon "maddog" Hall
John:
That's an interesting statement. I would think it was the same case
and port setup, but a different motherboard since you couldn't just
slot a MIPS processor into a VAXstation processor.
That is why I said "based". "Based" means that you did not have to
requalify a lot of the parts, that you could use a lot of the same Bill of
Materials....it does not mean you use exactly the same PCB. In the case
of the VAXstation/DECstation 3100 that meant we used the same serial io
chips and did not provide the hardware flow control.
Yes! It's coming back to me, the 3100s were horrible for serial,
> though I think they had fixed it for the 5000 series systems, since
> the DECstation 5000 and the DECserver 5100 were identical, except the
> DECStation had a graphics card and cost 10-20% _less_ than the
> DECstation 5000. So we bought DECStations and used them as servers.
The server groups were different engineers, and the 5000s were designed
after the DECstation 3100/2100 series.
Actually we MIGHT have caught the issue with the serial port for the
DECstation 3100/2100 because I brought up the issue in a hardware meeting
and was assured that it had been fixed because (and I can still hear this
person's voice in my head) the DECstation was a REAL UNIX MACHINE. I
should have found that person later and beaten him to death.
David:
> Actually, Cutler was already in trouble with management because of the
> Prism project. Prism was the first try at building a RISC machine (this
> was in the 1985-1986 time frame) and it was managed by Dave Cutler.
> Unfortunately, Dave was not a good administrator. He was doing a very bad
> job of managing the project and doing a very bad job of keeping management
> up to date on what was going on. Finally, management cancelled Prism and
> that is when they decided to go with the MIPS architecture.
>
> That is not what I experienced. I will not comment on Dave's skills as an
administrator or manager of the project. I do know that he had the very
ambitious project of doing the next-generation architecture and the next
generation operating system. He wanted a micro-kernel based system with
"personalities", one personality being VMS and the other personality being
Unix. One issue he had was when there was a clash between personalities
he would always favor VMS and therefore the Unix personality would not be
"perfect". I felt this was a mistake, since Unix people did not tolerate
things that did not smell like Unix. VMS people could have been led over
to a new environment over time since DEC controlled the path with VMS.
The reason I know this is that I personally interviewed with David Cutler
for the position of Unix Product Manager for his new operating system.
The interview was going fine until I tried to explain to Dave why his
strategy was wrong and he had to make the Unix side really compatible.
Then things got ugly, as David really did not like to be told he was wrong.
Ken did have the bad habit of cutting off Dave's development money, then
giving it back to him again. I seem to remember that Dave was still going
full steam ahead while the PMAX was being developed, which is one reason
why he was caught so flat-footed when PMAX was announced. It was kept
REALLY SECRET. It probably did not help that Ken reportedly asked David
in a gleeful tone if the new chip would be as fast as the PMAX....
"Will it be THIS FAST, Dave?" was the reported question.
It is also my belief that the Alpha chip came directly from Dave's work on
the PRISM, and that Windows NT came directly from David's work on the
microkernel with personalities. DEC never "decided to go with MIPS"
except as a stop-gap measure for Unix. If DEC had "decided to go with
MIPS" they would have ported VMS to it, and since that never happened, it
was obvious that DEC had not embraced MIPS.
md
On Sat, Jul 6, 2024 at 3:27 PM John Stoffel <john(a)stoffel.org> wrote:
> >>>>> "Jon" == Jon \"maddog\" Hall via WLUG <wlug(a)lists.wlug.org> writes:
>
> > The DECstation 3100 (aka the PMAX) was a system based on the same
> > motherboard as the VAXstation 3100, except with a MIPS processor.
> > It was the first time that Digital had built a system using another
> > company's chip architecture.
>
> That's an interesting statement. I would think it was the same case
> and port setup, but a different motherboard since you couldn't just
> slot a MIPS processor into a VAXstation processor.
>
> > We had a choice between supporting the MIPS R2000 chip as "big
> > endian" or "little endian". We chose to support "little endian" to
> > be compatible with PDP-11s, VAXen and Intel chips, rather than be
> > compatible with other manufacturers. This, in my mind, was very
> > important since it let us share data over NFS and give greater
> > compatibility with programs and libraries of applications already
> > running on other Unix-like systems such as Ultrix, BSD, etc. Sun
> > experienced this grief when they ported Solaris off the big endian
> > Motorola and SPARC chips to little endian Intel.
>
> > One of the few issues of the DECstation 3100 (and 2100, known as the
> > "PMIN" after that) was that the serial I/O port did not support
> > hardware handshaking. To save a couple of pennies per system the
> > VAX hardware designers determined that having full hardware modem
> > control (DECstandard 52) on the board was not needed, because "very
> > few workstation users hook a modem up to their serial line". What
> > they meant was that "very few VMS workstation users hooked a modem
> > up to their serial line", opting for DECnet to handle their
> > networking. Therefore the pins necessary to support hardware modem
> > control were missing from the DECstation product lines.
>
> Yes! It's coming back to me, the 3100s were horrible for serial,
> though I think they had fixed it for the 5000 series systems, since
> the DECstation 5000 and the DECserver 5100 were identical, except the
> DECStation had a graphics card and cost 10-20% _less_ than the
> DECstation 5000. So we bought DECStations and used them as servers.
> :-)
>
> I used to live and breathe the DEC options catalog, which was
> something like an inch thick book in purple (maybe blue? maybe changed
> each year?) with all the various options and configurations you could
> get.
>
> > Unix users, on the other hand, often had modems hooked up to their
> > workstation, to handle cu(1), uucp(1) and other serial line
> > protocols. We eventually got around this by better refining
> > software modem control, but it was painful.
>
> The EE department had Sun 1s at WPI, and they have the 9600 baud
> bitnet connection running of a VAX 11/780 at the time.
>
> > The proposal, design and release of the DECstation 3100 was a
> > top-secret project inside of DEC, kept secret from even many people
> > in the Digital Unix group in Nashua, New Hampshire. The
> > development of the system was done in Palo Alto's WorkStation
> > Engineering group and the software engineering was done in the
> > Western Software Labs in Palo Alto, albeit by taking key engineers
> > from the Nashua facility and transplanting them temporarily to Palo
> > Alto.
>
> > The implementation was kept so secret that it caught Dave Cutler,
> > then working on DEC's next-generation operating system and chips, by
> > surprise when it debuted at a Board Meeting in Maynard,
> > Massachusetts. Shortly after that board meeting Mr. Cutler left
> > Digital and moved (with some of his team) to Microsoft.
>
> Do you think that was just the straw that broke the camel's back?
>
> > The DECstations only were manufactured for a couple of years, as the
> > DEC Alpha processor replaced MIPS in Digital's lineup. Although
> > originally promised that OSF/1 would be ported to the DECstation
> > line, this port was dropped due to realizing that there would never
> > be an application base to support the customers of a DECstation
> > OSF/1 port. It was better for ISVs and customers to maintain the
> > Ultrix base for the DECstations than to split the base into Ultrix
> > and OSF/1.
>
> Yeah, we had a ton of DECstations and a bunch of various early model
> Alphas at WPI which we beta tested for DEC. The AS2100 with 8 DEC
> StorageWorks canisters (which Netapp used on their early F220, F330,
> F740 NAS systems) holding 3.5" disks, dual ported, hot-swapable. Nice
> gear.
>
> The move from Ultrix to DEC OSF/1 was a bit painful, but not terrible
> as I recall, but I'm sure I've blocked all the bad memories from then.
>
> Thanks for the walk down memory lane!
> John
>
1 year, 8 months
Re: [Wlug] Toshiba Laptop?
by Robert Condon
I am writing this on a Toshiba Tecra 8000. I have used it since Suse
7.2 but it is now 8.1. APM worked correctly with 8.0 but not with 8.1
so I will be reinstalling it with 8.0. Otherwise, I am happy with it
though it gets hot and the battery only lasts about an hour.
Bob Condon
doug waud wrote:
> Wesley Allen wrote:
>
>> What's your collective opinion of Toshiba laptops? Circuit City has
>> got a decent machine (Satellite 1415-s173) for $999 and they actually
>> let me boot Knoppix on it to check out hardware support (everything
>> worked).
>
>
> I have an old toshiba satellite ( 2595cdt ) which runs nicely for me on
> SuSE 7.2. I have had it since 0ct/99. No problems. Have added memory and
> put in a large hard drive.
>
>> The only thing I'm wondering about is the battery.
>
>
> Battery life sucks. Like Andy I seem to get very poor running time. I
> get an hour or less on battery so, for all practical purposes, I just
> run it off the AC.
>
>> MY HP
>> laptop doesn't let Linux read the battery info with either apm or acpi,
>> and I think this is a function of an incredibly bad bios
>> implementation. The demo models at Circuit City didn't have batteries,
>> so I had no way of checking this bug out on that brand. Does anyone
>> have experience with a Toshiba laptop t
>
>
> I ran xapm and got a display which said I had 15% charge so I assume the
> bios was readable. The 15% probably means little since the computer has
> been sitting in its case inactive since the last WLUG meeting.
>
> doug
>
> PS while drafting this email the % came up to 21 so it seems the xapm is
> working as expected.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wlug mailing list
> Wlug(a)mail.wlug.org
> http://mail.wlug.org/mailman/listinfo/wlug
>
23 years, 2 months
Re: [Wlug] Here I am begging again.
by John Stoffel
Ken> I have not been making the meetings. That does not mean my SUN
Ken> ULTRA1 running Aurora Linux can no longer create 'interesting'
Ken> problems. This time the second SUN ULTRA running Gentoo is in
Ken> cahoots.
Ken> I have a new SAMSUNG SyncMaster flat screen monitor. I have
Ken> attached this monitor via a Belkin SUN adapter to my ULTRA1's.
This is the 13W3 to VGA (HDB15) analog connector? Not the HDMI
connector on the monitor? I've got a ton of Samsung 204Bs at work and
they're nice to work on.
Ken> It does not work!! The monitor flashes a little square window
Ken> saying something about "Not optimum mode". It feels that it has
Ken> not been configured correctly. The buttons on the right of the
Ken> monitor, which are there to set it up, also do not work with the
Ken> SUN's is attached.
Ken> The monitor works fine with PC type machinery. The Belkin worked
Ken> fine with a regular old tube monitor. (I have not dug out the
Ken> old monitor to check whether it still works. I suspect it does.)
Ken> Anybody have any ideas?
Hmmm... if it was running Solaris I'd say take a look at the m64config
command, but that's for Ultra 5/10 boxes.
Basically, I think you need to force X to use a certain
configuration.
What does 'xrandr -query' say? Anything useful?
Try editing your /etc/X11/xorg.conf to have a section like this,
though you'll need to change the DEVICE from my old Matrox to whatever
the Sun is really using.
Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Samsung LCD"
HorizSync 60
EndSection
Section "Screen"
Identifier "Default Screen"
Device "Matrox Graphics, Inc. MGA G400/G450"
Monitor "Samsung LCD"
DefaultDepth 24
SubSection "Display"
Depth 1
Modes "1280x1024"
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Depth 4
Modes "1280x1024"
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Depth 8
Modes "1280x1024"
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Depth 15
Modes "1280x1024"
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Depth 16
Modes "1280x1024"
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Depth 24
Modes "1280x1024"
EndSubSection
EndSection
16 years, 7 months
Re: Wlug meeting on Thurs. Dec 10th 2020 @7pm.
by Frank Sweetser
It depends on the use case. If all you want is a free, reasonably stable
version of RHEL, Centos stream might just be good enough.
If your goal is to support software that wants RHEL, this could be hit or
miss, as you'll always be running on an approximation of RHEL. You could
say you should always have been just buying RHEL if it's that critical, but
it's now that much less optional.
I'm also really curious to see what's going to happen to the various black
box appliances out there that currently run on CentOS, like Aruba
Clearpass, Aruba wireless controllers, and the Juniper QFX switches. I
doubt they'll want something stablish like CentOS Stream, so they most
likely have three basic choices.
1. Run on CentOS 7 for as long as they can get away with it, and hope
something better appears in the meantime
2. Work out a licensing deal for RHEL, and pass along the costs to the
customers
3. Switch to an alternate distro like Ubuntu LTS
The next year is going to be interesting for more than a few vendors...
On Wed, Dec 9, 2020 at 3:59 PM Chuck Anderson <cra(a)alum.wpi.edu> wrote:
> This might not be as bad as it initially sounds. Centos Stream will
> consist of rolling updates that start from what will become each RHEL
> point release to what will become the the next RHEL point release, so
> for example from RHEL 8.1 to 8.2 to 8.3 etc. In fact, Centos 6, 7,
> and 8 already is a "forced" minor upgrade every quarter or so since
> they stop supporting x.y after RHEL x.y+1 comes out and your normal
> system yum updates just migrate you to the newer x.y+1 anyway. This
> is in contrast to how RHEL itself works, or how Scientific Linux used
> to work, where you actually have to take explicit action to upgrade to
> a new point release either using new install media or manual "yum"
> commands. See for example:
>
> https://scientificlinux.org/documentation/faq/faq-releases/
>
> And here is what one of my Centos 7 systems looks like:
>
> >cat /etc/centos-release
> CentOS Linux release 7.9.2009 (Core)
> >rpm -qf /etc/centos-release
> centos-release-7-9.2009.1.el7.centos.x86_64
> >rpm -qi centos-release
> Name : centos-release
> Version : 7
> Release : 9.2009.1.el7.centos
> Architecture: x86_64
> Install Date: Thu 03 Dec 2020 07:27:24 AM EST
> ..
>
> See how the Centos 7.9.2009 release package was installed this month?
> Previously, I had older versions of that package:
>
> >sudo grep centos-release /var/log/yum.log*
> /var/log/yum.log:Nov 13 08:46:49 Updated: centos-release.x86_64
> 7-9.2009.0.el7.centos
> /var/log/yum.log:Dec 03 07:27:24 Updated: centos-release.x86_64
> 7-9.2009.1.el7.centos
> /var/log/yum.log-20181204:Jul 30 14:47:20 Updated:
> centos-release-7-5.1804.el7.centos.2.x86_64
> /var/log/yum.log-20181204:Aug 14 12:15:35 Updated:
> centos-release-7-5.1804.4.el7.centos.x86_64
> /var/log/yum.log-20181204:Oct 10 05:45:04 Updated: centos-release.x86_64
> 7-5.1804.5.el7.centos
> /var/log/yum.log-20181204:Dec 04 07:19:18 Updated: centos-release.x86_64
> 7-6.1810.2.el7.centos
> /var/log/yum.log-20200428:Jan 08 09:08:24 Updated:
> centos-release-7-7.1908.0.el7.centos.x86_64
> /var/log/yum.log-20200428:Apr 28 07:47:22 Updated: centos-release.x86_64
> 7-8.2003.0.el7.centos
>
> So over the years, this server got upgraded automatically from Centos
> 7.5 to 7.6 to 7.7 to 7.9. I have nightly automatic "yum updates"
> turned on, so it just gets updates as they come out and I reboot the
> server once every so often so the updates get fully applied (new
> kernels, new shared libraries).
>
> The difference with Centos Stream is you'll get updates continually
> /before/ RHEL releases it eventually as a "snapshot in time" called
> RHEL x.y+1. Sure, they won't be as heavily tested as RHEL point
> releases, but if you really need/want that, then you can either buy
> RHEL or stage your Centos Stream updates from TEST-->STAGE-->PROD,
> and/or stagger them across your PROD systems to minimize impact.
>
> On Wed, Dec 09, 2020 at 02:59:30PM -0500, Tim Keller wrote:
> > I've got a fair amount of centos in production... this sucks... guess I'm
> > going to Debian now...
> >
> > On Wed, Dec 9, 2020 at 9:10 AM Frank Sweetser via WLUG <
> wlug(a)lists.wlug.org>
> > wrote:
> >
> > > And for anyone looking to contribute to Greg's efforts:
> > >
> > > https://github.com/hpcng/rocky
> > >
> > > On Tue, Dec 8, 2020 at 11:23 PM Chuck Anderson via WLUG <
> > > wlug(a)lists.wlug.org> wrote:
> > >
> > >> My favorite comment on that post:
> > >>
> > >> "Gregory Kurtzer says:
> > >> December 8, 2020 at 4:27 pm
> > >>
> > >> I am considering creating another rebuild of RHEL and may even be able
> > >> to hire some people for this effort. If you are interested in helping,
> > >> please join the HPCng slack (link on the website hpcng.org)
> > >>
> > >> Greg
> > >> (original founder of CentOS)"
> > >>
> > >> On Tue, Dec 08, 2020 at 10:35:24PM -0500, Frank Sweetser via WLUG
> wrote:
> > >> > Well, there's plenty talk about for CentOS users, like what you're
> > >> going to
> > >> > switch to now that CentOS is becoming something completely
> different:
> > >> >
> > >> > https://blog.centos.org/2020/12/future-is-centos-stream/
>
--
- Frank
5 years, 3 months
Re: [Wlug] Dec Meeting announcement / linux-raid problem
by Eric Martin
On Mon, Dec 20, 2010 at 4:52 PM, John Stoffel <john(a)stoffel.org> wrote:
> >>>>> "Eric" == Eric Martin <eric.joshua.martin(a)gmail.com> writes:
>
> Eric> Now, the main reason for my email. My mythbox / home file
> Eric> server runs linux soft-raid in RAID5 with 3 500GB disks. One
> Eric> disk went bad a while ago and the array never rebuilt itself.
>
> So you only had two 500Gb disks left in the array?
>
Correct. I just received my new disk yesterday and dd_rescued the data from
the bad disk onto a fresh disk. the array won't start, so here's the info
you asked for
>
> Eric> The other day, the second disk went bad. Am I hosed?
>
> Possibly, it depends on how bad the second disk is. What I would do
> is try to use dd_rescue to copy the 2nd bad disk onto a new disk
> (possibly your original bad disk if you feel brave!) and then try to
> re-assemble your raid 5 using that. You might or might not have
> corruption in the filesystem, so make sure you run an fsck on it.
>
> Now, in the future, you should run a weekly check of the array for bad
> blocks or other problems, so that you get notified if a disk dies
> silently. I use the following crontab entry:
>
BTW, this is what I was missing. there was no warning that my disk was
bad! Like I said, I have backups but the last one failed so I want
something tighter
>
>
>
> Eric> I've been googling for 'rebuild bad linux software raid' but all
> Eric> I get is the rebuild command. Also, I don't see any tools that
> Eric> will move bad data to another spot on the disk. This is my
> Eric> first time using software raid so I'm in a bit over my head.
>
> The first thing is to ask for help on the linux-raid mailing list,
> which is hosted on vger.kernel.org.
>
> But somethings you can do to help is to give us more information.
> Like:
>
> cat /proc/mdstat
>
Personalities : [raid0] [raid1] [raid6] [raid5] [raid4] [raid10]
md2 : inactive sda3[0](S)
4000064 blocks
md3 : inactive sda4[0]
483315456 blocks
unused devices: <none>
>
> mdadm -E /dev/sd...
>
> or /dev/hd... depending on whether your SATA or IDE drives.
> Basically, use the devices you got from the /proc/mdstat output as
> your basis.
>
> Give us this output, and we should be able to help you more.
>
livecd / # mdadm -E /dev/sda3
/dev/sda3:
Magic : a92b4efc
Version : 00.90.00
UUID : 8374ea27:6e191996:e56f6693:e45468a9
Creation Time : Sat Jul 11 17:14:31 2009
Raid Level : raid5
Used Dev Size : 4000064 (3.81 GiB 4.10 GB)
Array Size : 8000128 (7.63 GiB 8.19 GB)
Raid Devices : 3
Total Devices : 2
Preferred Minor : 0
Update Time : Mon Dec 13 03:59:27 2010
State : clean
Active Devices : 2
Working Devices : 2
Failed Devices : 1
Spare Devices : 0
Checksum : fc28b820 - correct
Events : 0.496842
Layout : left-symmetric
Chunk Size : 64K
Number Major Minor RaidDevice State
this 0 8 3 0 active sync /dev/sda3
0 0 8 3 0 active sync /dev/sda3
1 1 8 19 1 active sync
2 2 0 0 2 faulty removed
livecd / # mdadm -E /dev/sda4
/dev/sda4:
Magic : a92b4efc
Version : 00.90.00
UUID : c7b07c90:cbd50faf:bc824667:2504996b
Creation Time : Sat Jul 11 16:52:52 2009
Raid Level : raid5
Used Dev Size : 483315456 (460.93 GiB 494.92 GB)
Array Size : 966630912 (921.85 GiB 989.83 GB)
Raid Devices : 3
Total Devices : 2
Preferred Minor : 3
Update Time : Thu Dec 9 11:13:25 2010
State : clean
Active Devices : 1
Working Devices : 1
Failed Devices : 2
Spare Devices : 0
Checksum : d43b9ad8 - correct
Events : 0.15550817
Layout : left-symmetric
Chunk Size : 64K
Number Major Minor RaidDevice State
this 0 8 4 0 active sync /dev/sda4
0 0 8 4 0 active sync /dev/sda4
1 1 0 0 1 faulty removed
2 2 0 0 2 faulty removed
livecd / # mdadm -E /dev/sdb3
mdadm: cannot open /dev/sdb3: No such file or directory
livecd / # mdadm -E /dev/sdb4
mdadm: cannot open /dev/sdb4: No such file or directory
livecd / # mdadm -E /dev/sdc4
/dev/sdc4:
Magic : a92b4efc
Version : 00.90.00
UUID : c7b07c90:cbd50faf:bc824667:2504996b
Creation Time : Sat Jul 11 16:52:52 2009
Raid Level : raid5
Used Dev Size : 483315456 (460.93 GiB 494.92 GB)
Array Size : 966630912 (921.85 GiB 989.83 GB)
Raid Devices : 3
Total Devices : 2
Preferred Minor : 3
Update Time : Thu Dec 9 11:13:06 2010
State : active
Active Devices : 2
Working Devices : 2
Failed Devices : 1
Spare Devices : 0
Checksum : d34e516a - correct
Events : 0.15550815
Layout : left-symmetric
Chunk Size : 64K
Number Major Minor RaidDevice State
this 1 8 20 1 active sync
0 0 8 4 0 active sync /dev/sda4
1 1 8 20 1 active sync
2 2 0 0 2 faulty removed
livecd / # mdadm -E /dev/sdc3
/dev/sdc3:
Magic : a92b4efc
Version : 00.90.00
UUID : 8374ea27:6e191996:e56f6693:e45468a9
Creation Time : Sat Jul 11 17:14:31 2009
Raid Level : raid5
Used Dev Size : 4000064 (3.81 GiB 4.10 GB)
Array Size : 8000128 (7.63 GiB 8.19 GB)
Raid Devices : 3
Total Devices : 2
Preferred Minor : 0
Update Time : Mon Dec 13 03:59:27 2010
State : clean
Active Devices : 2
Working Devices : 2
Failed Devices : 1
Spare Devices : 0
Checksum : fc28b832 - correct
Events : 0.496842
Layout : left-symmetric
Chunk Size : 64K
Number Major Minor RaidDevice State
this 1 8 19 1 active sync
0 0 8 3 0 active sync /dev/sda3
1 1 8 19 1 active sync
2 2 0 0 2 faulty removed
/dev/sda is a good disk, /dev/sdc is the bad disk and /dev/sdb is the good
disk that has the clone of /dev/sdc. Curiously, mdadm -E doesn't work on
/dev/sdb even though the partitions are setup correctly
thanks!
>
> John
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wlug mailing list
> Wlug(a)mail.wlug.org
> http://mail.wlug.org/mailman/listinfo/wlug
>
--
Eric Martin
15 years, 3 months
Re: Greetings Programs!
by Tim Keller
Lexi,
I've heard of Tiny, but I've never seen it in action. That sounds really
cool! Feel free to bring along the laptop to show it off! That in itself
sounds like a great idea for a talk!
Later,
Tim.
On Wed, Jan 8, 2020 at 5:16 PM Lexi Haley via WLUG <wlug(a)lists.wlug.org>
wrote:
> Hi, I'm Lexi!
>
> I've not been to a WLUG meeting since ... since a long time .... I
> remember a Blender talk, and a Maddog talk - and these look like circa
> 2003/2004.... So, absent a long time!
>
> Anyways. I am trying to find the time to come again.
>
> I've been a casual Linux user since 1998, when I installed Debian from a
> pile of floppies (( or should I say, my friend installed it for me, and my
> learning journey began )) .... and for a long time I was an exclusive user
> .... and at heart I think I am still - even as I flog along a 10 year old
> iMac.
>
> But for a couple years now, on my laptop I've been running 'Tiny Core
> Linux' , which if you're unfamiliar with it, it is based on the Linux From
> Scratch work, with an emphasis on a 'tiny' footprint. Needed additional
> software are mounted into ram from squashfs archives, on the fly. It is
> quirky, but I like it. I wondered if anyone else has used it (or uses it).
>
> I didn't feel right just asking blindly, without a vague reintroduction of
> myself.
>
> So - question: Anyone else use, now or previously, the Tiny Core Linux
> Distribution? [*]
>
> Thanks,
> Lexi Haley (WPI CS 2002)
>
> [*] a search on the email archives yielded no hits ...
>
> _______________________________________________
> WLUG mailing list -- wlug(a)lists.wlug.org
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--
I am leery of the allegiances of any politician who refers to their
constituents as "consumers".
6 years, 2 months
Re: [EXT] The future of WLUG
by Tim Keller
Actually my thinking was to use something like OBS (open broadcast studio,
which we've done a talk about in the past) and actually do that.. Capture
the output from their machine, plus the audio and a headshot.
At this point, it's an idea.
On Wed, Jan 15, 2020 at 4:11 PM Joshua Stone <joshua.gage.stone(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
> That's excellent news! Sounds like the service is already paying for
> itself.
>
> I'm not opposed to video uploads, so long as the video/audio production is
> decent and the camera isn't in people's faces. I have a Sony video camera
> with native 4K and optical zoom, with a shotgun microphone attachment for
> capturing audio in front of the camera instead of the surrounding area. I
> also have a blue yeti if you want a good microphone for public speakers to
> use.
>
> We could make this a bit fancier and less intrusive by having a screencast
> of the speaker's computer to show slideshow material, terminal output, etc,
> and have an omnidirectional microphone listening and syncing with the
> screencast.
>
> -Josh
>
> On Wed, Jan 15, 2020, 13:51 Tim Keller <turbofx(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> I've gotten a couple of hits about people possibly showing up for the
>> next WLUG meeting from meetup. That's cool!
>>
>> I went looking at the Boston Linux Users Group site and it's clear to me
>> that we're really missing the boat with putting our meetings on youtube,
>> well at least the ones with a definite presenter.
>>
>> Would people be freaked out about being on youtube? Is this something
>> that people would be interested in? I've got a decent DSLR we could use to
>> take video, but I don't want people to be uncomfortable.
>>
>> Tim.
>>
>> On Sun, Jan 12, 2020 at 1:41 PM <joshua.gage.stone(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Tim,
>>>
>>> Thank you very much for creating a meetup.com group for us! The UX for
>>> finding future meetups and adding meetup dates to a calender is quite good.
>>> Finding WLUG should also be fairly easy now when searching for "linux"
>>> within a 50 mile radius of Boston:
>>>
>>>
>>> https://www.meetup.com/find/?allMeetups=false&keywords=linux&radius=50&user…
>>>
>>> I've noticed that some search strings will show LUGs with overlapping
>>> interests but not WLUG. I think adding more words like "FOSS", "Android",
>>> "Libre", "Open Source", "Ubuntu", "Fedora", "OpenSUSE", "Arch Linux",
>>> "Unix", etc, to the related topics and/or What We're About section should
>>> improve this.
>>>
>>> I've tried setting up a community over Slack but I think the steps need
>>> to join was what made it too intrusive for new people -- take joining the
>>> Rust language Slack server for example:
>>>
>>> https://rust-slack.herokuapp.com/
>>>
>>> - Send an invite link to your email
>>> - Register with a name and password
>>> - Be greeted with prompts about whether to send notifications
>>> - Open the #general channel
>>>
>>> And this has to be repeated for joining every community that has their
>>> own Slack server, or at least this has been my experience so far. I think
>>> Slack has cemented itself as more of a means for teams to collaborate on a
>>> project, not so much for casual users who want to jump right into a new
>>> chat.
>>>
>>> Matrix only needs to register a username and password (email is
>>> optional) on the server you're on, and once that's done you can join any
>>> number of channels on that server. This is much closer to the UX of IRC,
>>> and it's still superior in some ways because there's no fiddling with
>>> choosing a specific authentication method like SASL and/or authenticating
>>> with nickserv
>>>
>>> I think in general Matrix has more mindshare amongst Linux users as a
>>> modern alternative to IRC, which I think is worth considering when
>>> comparing frequency of posts on Reddit:
>>>
>>>
>>> https://old.reddit.com/r/linux/search?q=matrix&restrict_sr=on&sort=relevanc…
>>>
>>> -Josh
>>>
>>> On Sat, 2020-01-11 at 22:59 -0500, Tim Keller via WLUG wrote:
>>>
>>> This morning I went out and created a meetup group for WLUG:
>>> https://www.meetup.com/Worcester-Linux-Users-Group and paid for six
>>> months. Feel free to go and join up if you'd like.
>>>
>>> The matrix stuff is cool, I cut my teeth on IRC so I'm always partial to
>>> the old school but I also understand that eventually we'll want a slack
>>> channel as well maybe.
>>>
>>> Tim.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Fri, Jan 10, 2020 at 4:07 PM Anderson, Charles R via WLUG <
>>> wlug(a)lists.wlug.org> wrote:
>>>
>>> We also have an IRC channel:
>>>
>>> http://www.wlug.org/participate.html
>>>
>>> Internet Relay Chat
>>>
>>> Join the realtime chat on our IRC channel.
>>>
>>> Connect your IRC client to irc.freenode.net
>>> Join the #wlug-ma channel or join directly from this link: irc://
>>> irc.freenode.net/#wlug-ma.
>>> See more information about Freenode and join the chat from your web
>>> browser
>>>
>>> but maybe IRC is too old school--no one chats on it anymore.
>>>
>>> On Fri, Jan 10, 2020 at 04:03:14PM -0500, Joshua Stone via WLUG wrote:
>>> > Hey all,
>>> >
>>> > Last night's meeting was excellent, and I'd like say thanks again to
>>> > Tim for giving me a ride home!
>>> >
>>> > Last night's discussion gave me ideas of ways we could improve general
>>> > activity, increase attendence, and improve outreach efforts. Hosting a
>>> > meetup.com group would be certainly improve discoverability, and
>>> > getting in touch with WPI's computer science group would be great too.
>>> >
>>> > I think what a lot communities are doing nowadays is having a text chat
>>> > format for users who want to communicate more easily over the internet,
>>> > especially with mobile devices. As an example, there are Discord
>>> > servers for Fedora, Ubuntu, OpenSUSE, etc, and they have room sizes
>>> > generally in the hundreds or even well over a thousand. Even before
>>> > Discord they'd use IRC for providing support, posting updates, etc.
>>> >
>>> > Having a text chat of our own would certainly help improve
>>> > participation -- I think Matrix would be a good option here because it
>>> > has many nice features and has a fairly polished user experience:
>>> >
>>> > - Numerous clients available on desktop, mobile, and web (
>>> > https://matrix.org/clients/
>>> > - Persistent chat history
>>> > - Link previews
>>> > - Various bots to choose from for adding functionality (
>>> > https://matrix.org/docs/projects/bots/
>>> > - User moderation
>>> > - Server federation
>>> > - Self-hosting available, both client and server are completely FOSS
>>> > - File sharing
>>> > - Voice/video calls
>>> >
>>> >
>>> > I have a screenshot if anyone wants to see what a Matrix chat room
>>> > would look like:
>>> >
>>> > https://i.imgur.com/aVILcWB.png
>>> >
>>> > Or you can join the room I made:
>>> >
>>> > https://matrix.to/#/!EiTljkvagZDFKfQfFu:matrix.org?via=matrix.org
>>> >
>>> > Alteratively, if you have a Matrix client already:
>>> >
>>> > #wlug:matrix.org
>>> >
>>> >
>>> >
>>> > Any thoughts?
>>> >
>>> >
>>> > -Josh
>>> _______________________________________________
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>>> To unsubscribe send an email to wlug-leave(a)lists.wlug.org
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>>
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>>>
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>>>
>>>
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>>>
>>> wlug-leave(a)lists.wlug.org
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>> --
>> I am leery of the allegiances of any politician who refers to their
>> constituents as "consumers".
>>
>
--
I am leery of the allegiances of any politician who refers to their
constituents as "consumers".
6 years, 2 months
Re: Reminder: Virtual Meeting today at 7PM Topic: Emacs awesomeness.
by Chris Thompson
Hello!
I'd like to offer a couple notes regarding your upgrade.
`apt list --list` may list more than what you've installed explicitly.
It will include the packages installed by default in the system
(/var/log/installer/initial-status.gz) as well as all the dependencies
of packages you've installed.
Anyway - that makes for a useful complete list, certainly, but you can
generally work from a much smaller list. I think the list you may want
comes from `apt-mark showmanual` to list packages you've specifically
installed. All this said,
https://askubuntu.com/questions/1383951/apt-mark-showmanual-shows-almost-al…
seems to indicate that results based on manual installation flags can be
problematic before 20.04, so YMMV (though you can exclude from your list
based on the initial-status file above as well).
While you can do a bash loop and install the packages that way, you can
also list a whole bunch on a single run, e.g. `apt install x y z q`. If
you are adding >1000 packages, you're likely to run into a limitation
doing it that way, but just mentioning - it'd be a little bit quicker
(being able to skip identifying packages already installed via others,
and running triggers fewer times, etc). Not that it matters all that
much, but if you did come up with a list of just 50-100 you need, it's
be a reasonable approach.
Note that there are changes between the packages in different versions
of the OS. Some packages may no longer be available, having been
abandoned, and others may be substituted with different packages and so
on. While these suggestions will get you close, it may not quite be
perfect. If you did opt for an upgrade instead (which works very well in
my experience) such changes will often be pointed out to you and/or
accommodated for automatically.
Finally, don't forget to check for any additional sources you may have
added in `/etc/apt/sources*`
Regards,
Chris
On 1/13/22 17:59, gmcaplan--- via WLUG wrote:
> Thank you. The Ubuntu info is concise, understandable, and helpful ...
> a great combination.
>
> George
>
> On 2022-01-13 3:56 pm, Tim Keller via WLUG wrote:
>
>> To your first question, you can get your list of installed packages
>> on Ubuntu by running "apt list --installed" and piping that to a file
>> and copying that off somewhere safe. You'll likely have to strip that
>> file a bit.
>> Then once you've got that file, on your cleanly installed system you
>> can enumerate over that file with a bash for loop and call "apt
>> install /package/"
>> To your second question, I'm sure we've got an R nerd around here..
>> Tim.
>>
>> On Thu, Jan 13, 2022 at 3:47 PM gmcaplan--- via WLUG
>> <wlug(a)lists.wlug.org> wrote:
>>
>> I was hoping to attend, but it looks like I will not be able to.
>> I hope it will be recorded because I, too, would like to learn about
>> emacs.
>> Also, I have two questions:
>> 1. I am running Ubuntu 18.04 LTS. When I update to ver. 20 or 22, I
>> would prefer to do a "clean" re-install, but I have a question. Does
>> that mean I must get a list of all my installed software and
>> re-install
>> them one at a time after I upgrade the OS? If so, is there an
>> easy way
>> for me to get the list?
>>
>> 2. I have been learning to use the software language R. I have a
>> couple
>> of questions and I would like to hear from anyone who has R
>> experience.
>>
>> Thank You.
>>
>> George Caplan
>> email: gmcaplan(a)gmcaplan.org
>>
>>
>> On 2022-01-13 1:12 pm, Michael Voorhis via WLUG wrote:
>> > On 1/13/22 12:58, Tim Keller via WLUG wrote:
>> >> Today he's going to show off some of his emacs foo.
>> >
>> > Will the talk be recorded? I'd love to hear the talk but can't
>> attend
>> > because of a conflict.
>> >
>> > --MCV.
>> > _______________________________________________
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>> >
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>>
>> --
>> I am leery of the allegiances of any politician who refers to their
>> constituents as "consumers".
>>
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4 years, 2 months
Re: [Wlug] reboot problem - Update
by Gregory Avedissian
Folks asked for an update on this, so here it is.
Original problem - Black screen on startup or reboot occurred about 25% of
the time, right after the grub menu. No hard drive activity, no boot, no
ssh. This problem has existed since I built the computer a year ago.
Newer problem - Hard lockups, especially when the load was heavy. I first
noticed this when I installed Gutsy on a spare partition. It also happened
a few times in Etch, but I was using a custom realtime kernel when it
happened. There were also a couple of spontaneous reboots.
Hardware - ASUS M2V motherboard, Ath. X2 3800, Kingston RAM, Enermax PSU,
some kind of GeForce 6200 with a fan that started getting noisy, Seagate
drive, all about a year old.
What I did -
Replaced the vid card with a slightly older GeForce, and since then, the
black screen has only occurred once or twice out of scores of reboots.
Got a power supply tester, and the 5V rail read 5.4V one of the times I
tested it. Contacted Enermax, and they told me to try a different power
supply before I RMA'd mine.
Got off the realtime kernel and went back to the stock Etch kernel. No
more lockups in debian.
Flashed the motherboard with the newest bios after reading that others
were having lockup problems with this board. It didn't help.
Got a new 350W SilverStone and put it in. Still getting lockups in Gutsy.
I believe that the spontaneous reboots are a result of the relative
placement of the power button and the wheeled leg of my office chair. I
moved the computer back a few inches after I saw the two of them meet
once. (Note for the interested builder - buttons on Coolermaster case
stick out and require only a light touch. I just built a computer for a
friend, and the buttons on the Antec case are recessed and not so easy to
press in.)
Put the Enermax back in, and everything seems to be fine as long as I stay
away from Gutsy and the power button. Thanks again to everyone for their help.
Greg
18 years, 3 months
Re: I need advice on a new ISP
by Doug Mildram
Doug/dmildram> The free Oracle cloud
setup talk sounds awesome.
I'd expect it would take quite some time,
both for presenter to prepare AND
maybe even for the meeting timeframe.
John, I think I may get as well try to
not learn what Ansible is
(being less into code control, node
automation, myself...
though I've seen an amazing amount
of interest on them on this group,
then pondered how we balance the
various knowledge/skill levels in wlug).
Am I right to assume that for a one-off,
i.e. one personal/home user wanting
free cloud storage and maybe email,
that the Ansible angle should
be postponed to follow
a dumber/simpler?? How To talk?
--Background just to expose my mind:
I was a unix sysadin for decades
since 1985, but my modern skills got
out of date around 2000. Fortunately
for me, I lucked into working with
Chuck,Frank, many others as a WPI
network engineer 2010-2019. Thus,
not a sysadmin any longer but just a
cubicle wall away from all kinds of
IT evolution via WPI. Heck, even the
WPI IT sysadmins leaned a bit?more?
on the brains in NetOps ! --love, doug
On Wed, Apr 12, 2023, 10:24 PM Chuck Anderson via WLUG <wlug(a)lists.wlug.org>
wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 12, 2023 at 05:14:31PM -0400, John Stoffel wrote:
> > > If you can hold your nose, Oracle Cloud offers free forever instances.
> > > That is where the WLUG website and DNS server is running these days.
> >
> > > https://www.oracle.com/cloud/free/
> >
> > > These are probablhy the most relevant free services you could use to
> > > replicate what you have at home now:
> >
> > And what's the price?
>
> Free forever.
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2 years, 11 months