luv-main June 2014

luv-main@luv.asn.au

40 participants
32 discussions

Telstra ADSL and Linux, a couple of dumb questions......

by zlinw＠mcmedia.com.au

I recently shifted, although still very much in rural Victoria I am now in ADSL range of an exchange (just over 5000 metres cable distance). I am considering getting the Telstra S+ bundle, this being a phone and ADSL broadband with a 50g alocation a month on a 24 month contract. I am fairly happy with this bundle it will save me around $4 to 500 dollars a year and giving __much__ higher data allowance. Is there any issues with this, will it work OK into a Linux system. For instance I found with Virgin moble broadband this system had to be enabled on a Windows system, something I do not have with network access. If it helps I have a small network of 4 machines one of which is the internet access box with a "do not speak unless spoken to" fire wall set up. ie firewall is set up so that only external incoming connections that are related to outgoing connections are allowed. NO machine is on all the time, so the ADSL line will mostly be connected to machine thats switched off. Lindsay

8 years, 5 months

enum in /etc/magic

by Russell Coker

I've got an enum in a data structure that I'd like to display in the output of file(1). 0 beshort 0xfe01 MySQL table definition file >2 byte x Version %d, >3 byte 9 Type MYISAM >3 byte 12 Type INNODB The above is a sample of what I'm doing, values 9 and 12 in byte 3 correspond to MYISAM and INNODB entries for the MySQL FRM file. https://github.com/twitter/mysql/blob/master/sql/handler.h The above URL has what seems to be a complete list, so I could write 31 lines in /etc/magic for this, but that's ugly. Is there a way I can specify a list of values to match followed by a list of strings to display and not have 31 lines? I'd like to develop a patch that can be accepted into the Debian package and hopefully upstream so it has to be the least ugly way of doing it. -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/

8 years, 5 months

Re: Telstra ADSL and Linux, a couple of dumb questions......

by Russell Coker

On Sun, 15 Jun 2014 01:06:42 James Harper wrote: > > On Sat, 14 Jun 2014 15:42:59 Andrew McGlashan wrote: > > > Yes on WiFi hotspot using Android, but most 2.x devices are too old to > > > support 4G or new, but too budget to have all the right radios. The > > > biggest problem with older gear is the radios that are supported -- > > > that's the biggest reason to /need/ to update mobile phones too. > > > > Kogan was offering 6G per month before Telstra stopped them from being > > too competitive. > > Got any evidence to support the claims that: > > a. Telstra stopped Kogan selling mobile services http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/523443/telstra_taken_court_over_isp… The URLs you cited and the above give enough information. > b. Telstra stopped them because they were too competitive Andrew McGlashan predicted that Telstra would stop ISPOne/Kogan on luv-talk some months before it happened. While there obviously isn't evidence that can stand in court against Telstra's legal team I think it's sufficient to convince most users of phone services. > Kogan bought 'wholesale' services from ISPone who in turn bought services > from Telstra. ISPone stopped paying Telstra so Telstra cut them off. ISPOne allege that Telstra raised prices after contracts were signed. The business that ISPOne was in was fairly simple. All they had to do to avoid bankruptcy was to set the sell prices a bit higher than the buy prices. If the buy prices were suddenly increased then that causes immediate bankruptcy. > Telstra elected to provide services to Aldi (who were in a similar > (identical?) situation) to bail them out, but not to Kogan beyond a very > short period after ISPone failed. They were under no obligation to do this. > [1] >From other articles I got the impression that Medion had a direct contract with Telstra before Telstra destroyed ISPOne. If that's the case then Telstra did have an "obligation". But like the "obligation" to ISPOne that sort of thing is optional to a company in Telstra's position. > ISPone made at least one attempt to stop Kogan selling plans allowing > customers to enjoy the high usage they had paid for, but that isn't > Telstra. [2] If Telstra increased the prices ISPOne was paying for data transfer then the only option for ISPOne would be to discourage users from transferring a lot of data. > You could argue that Telstra refusing to do business with Kogan directly > after ISPone's failure equates to Telstra stopping Kogan selling mobile > services, but I disagree with that inference. I believe that the fact that all the cheapest 3G plans disappeared in less than a year after Telstra's dispute with ISPOne is not a coincidence. I believe that Telstra is making significantly more money now due to the lack of competition. > [1] > http://www.zdnet.com/telstra-picks-over-remains-of-ispone-saves-aldi-nixes-> kogan-7000019542/ [2] > http://www.zdnet.com/kogan-blames-ispone-for-mobile-customer-woes-700001336 > 5/ -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/

8 years, 5 months

Re: Telstra ADSL and Linux, a couple of dumb questions.....

by zlinw＠mcmedia.com.au

On Sat, 14 Jun 2014, Andrew McGlashan wrote: > Hi Lindsay, > > If you are 5km from the exchange by cable, then unless the copper is > quite thick, you probably won't even get ANY kind of DSL service. > > Now, let's say you are lucky and the cable is thick; chances are the > speed will still be low due to the loss of signal over the phone line -- > it won't sync high and it will probably have lots of dropouts, > particularly if the weather interferes. Telstra is not known for > properly maintaining the copper network; they do bandaid fixes on the > copper line. This will effect you no matter what provider you have. > > -- > Kind Regards > AndrewM > Many thanks for all the replies, its been most helpfull. A great deal of info to digest. A minor comment, I do not and never will have a mobie phone. Andrew raisies an intersting point in the above. I worked for most of my life as an PMG/Telecom/Telstra tech mostly on inside work lonngline exchange maintence etc. but I have done much work on transmission quality of the customer cable system. I may say I am very dubious of the ability of the cable to my location to work at ADSL frequncies. On a normal dialup using a Maestro Woomera modem, one of the best avalible, it will only manage a connect rate of 19.2 kilobits/sec, this is pathetic. Trying it from a nearby place which is over 2000 metres closer to the exchange produced the same result, ____not_good___. It appears the cable closer to town is no good (not unusual these days) I have known about the ADSL access since I moved in but have no desire to throw money down the drain for a system that is no good. There is still hope though, currently for high speed access I use prepiad Virgin 3G broadband. While this is __very__ expensive it is fast, generally getting 4 to 500 kilobytes/sec transfer rates (I am only a kilometre or so from the tower). Virgin do have a 40 dollar a month plan with a 12 gig data allowance, If you use more it just cuts off (effectively). THe USB modems dont much like the summer heat (common I am told for dongles) but is quite usable still. Virgin does have paymnet options I find reasonable and I have found the company __VERY__ helpfull in support. The 12 gig allowance will be more than enough as I do not do movies or TV or anything like that. Incidently I am JUST out of range of fixed radio NBN (like 3 or 400 metres), being in a valley behind some rising ground. Not that this is an issue. Lindsay

8 years, 5 months

Re: Linux PPPoE bridge mode issues - again

by Peter Ross

From: "James Harper" <james.harper(a)bendigoit.com.au> >> >> I posted last year about a problem I was having with Linux's PPPoE >> functionality in regards to a specific modem. At the time I put it >> down to a dodgy modem and moved on, but now I've hit it on another >> modem, and twice seems more than coincidence. > > You aren't a Telstra customer are you? > > http://www.reddit.com/r/australia/comments/2485wh/telstra_internet_traffic_… As said, I had similar issues - and it is an Optus network. For the case mentioned here, I would go with the commentary on the mentioned page: ITT: The evidence posted just indicates there's a fucked up router somewhere in Telstra (or along the path) that's screwing with large packets, nothing here proves Telstra monitoring. Why it only affects some hosts? Because routing isn't the same for all destinations. Regards Peter

8 years, 5 months

Notebook with inactive screen after timeout

by Andrew Greig

Hi, I don't understand whether my computer is sleeping or hibernating or something else. After booting up into a KDE desktop on OpenSuse 13.1, after doing nothing for around ten minutes, the screen goes black. W.hen I move the mouse the computer "wakes up" a bit and the screen shows the OpenSuse graphic on the right side, and the mouse pointer is responsive, but nothing else is visible or available. There is no dialogue box to enter a password to unlock it, nothing at all. If I have a browser or other app open and close the lid, it restores quite well on opening the lid again. What is the difference between the two states, and what config file would I need to look at to resolve the problem above? My only solution to date is to CTRL+ALT+F2 su and reboot. Irritating but not the end of the world. Thanks Andrew Greig

8 years, 5 months

Problems with VirtualBox kernel modules

by Terry Duell

Hello All, After migrating my system (Fedora 20 x86_64) from a spinning disc on an old MB to an SSD on a new UEFI MB, I have problems starting any of my VirtualBox guest systems. The message I get says that either the kernel drivers are not installed or there is a permission problem with /etc/init.d/vboxdrv. I have run /etc/init.d/vboxdrv setup and that reports... Stopping VirtualBox kernel modules [ OK ] Uninstalling old VirtualBox DKMS kernel modules [ OK ] Trying to register the VirtualBox kernel modules using DKMS[ OK ] Starting VirtualBox kernel modules [FAILED] and sudo modprobe vboxdrv reports... modprobe: ERROR: could not insert 'vboxdrv': Required key not available so, does this mean that the problem is to do with a missing EFI boot key? Is there any way to fix this? Cheers, -- Regards, Terry Duell

8 years, 5 months

USB keyboards no longer working after upgrade

by Toby Corkindale

I've found myself in a bit of a confused state. I upgraded a machine from Ubuntu 12.04 LTS to 14.04 LTS, and have now lost USB keyboard input. (And possibly lost other USB input devices, but I can't tell as it boots to textmode console only) Keyboards work in BIOS and at the Grub prompt, but not after the kernel has booted. The machine was previously running the 14.04 kernel, so that hasn't actually changed. If I boot the machine with a USB key running a fresh version of Ubuntu 14.04, the keyboard works fine too. I've tried several keyboards, and every combination of USB-related option in the BIOS to no avail. I assume that somewhere in the past couple of years, I've modified something on this machine which is now conflicting with something that's been upgraded.. but I have no idea what. I can get at the filesystem to edit things via the bootable USB version of Ubuntu. Any ideas of what to try? Cheers, Toby

8 years, 5 months

How best to move system to SSD

by Terry Duell

Hello All, I now have my SSD and have been trying to sort out how best to go about the business of moving my system to it. There is a lot of stuff on the web about this and I think I have some of it figured out, but none I have seen really fits what I want to do. Best to check before I bugger everything up. Firstly I am running Fedora 20 and my current disc is 500 GB formatted as /boot = 577 MB, / = 52 GB, swap = 8.4 GB, /home = 439 GB. My SSD is 256 GB. My thinking is that I would format the SSD as /boot = 500 MB, / = 50 GB, swap = 8 GB, and /home = 197 GB. After setting up the SSD as my boot disc I will transfer a number of folders from my current /home and leave the rest on the current disc which I would mount as /home/terry/disk2 (say). I should add I have a second 500 GB disc that I can use to hold stuff while reformatting my current 500 GB drive. So, the plan looks like this...(but some bits are not clear to me) install the SSD and partition (as above) as ext4 using gparted. Reboot with live distro and mount the 500 GB (spinning) disc and the SSD; sudo mkdir /media/src sudo mkdir /media/ssd sudo mount /dev/sda1 /media/src sudo mount /dev/sdd1 /media/ssd then copy src to ssd sudo rsync -ax /media/src/ /media/dest/ I think this will copy my /boot only, is that correct? If it is only /boot copied then I need to also... sudo mount /dev/sda2 /media/src sudo mount /dev/sdd2 /media/ssd then copy src to ssd sudo rsync -ax /media/src/ /media/dest/ to copy my / across. now I can unmount /media/src, and unmount /media/ssd I now need to get the UUID of the SSD drive (sudo /sbin/blkid) and mount the SSD partition where Fedora is now installed... sudo mount /dev/ssd2 /media/ssd (assuming /dev/ssd2 is my new /) open /media/ssd/etc/fstab and replace the UUIDs of old disc with the UUIDs of the SSD, and include the options noatime,discard also add tmpfs to fstab for some temp and logs tmpfs /tmp tmpfs defaults,noatime,mode=1777 0 0 tmpfs /var/tmp tmpfs defaults,noatime,mode=1777 0 0 tmpfs /var/log tmpfs defaults,noatime,mode=0755 0 0 Now to reinstall grub, after a reboot with live distro... Here it gets a bit murky for me, not quite sure what I should be doing. What I have read says mount /dev/sdd1 /mnt then proceeds to also mount /sys /proc /run /dev under /mnt, but this doesn't look right when my /dev/sdd1 is /boot Can someone please clear up my confusion and perhaps point me to some advice that better fits the partitioning scheme I want to end up with? Cheers, -- Regards, Terry Duell

8 years, 5 months

Re: Debian 7.5 netinst - no kernel installed

by Colin Fee

On 9 June 2014 14:11, James Harper <james(a)ejbdigital.com.au> wrote: > > > > I was rebuilding my home print server (a re-purposed ASUS eepc netbook) > > yesterday and was trying Debian 7.5 netinst from a USB stick. > > > > All was going well until partway through it complained about not having > an > > installable kernel available to intstall. I continued on through the > process and > > sure enough at the end the reboot stalled at grub due to no kernel > entries. > > > > Does your eeepc have one of those processors that should support PAE but > doesn't? > No, full pae support. Previously it was running ubuntu 12.04 with the generic-pae kernel. Debian ended up installing the 3.2.0-4-686-pae kernel. > > What exact model eeepc is it? Is it mentioned here > https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEeePC/Models ? > >From memory, i.e. I'm not in front of it right now, it's a 701. The installer had no trouble ID-ing hardware and asked me which of the wired or wireless NICs I wanted to use. > > And what exact netinst download did you get? > This one: http://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/7.5.0/i386/iso-cd/debian-7.5.0-i386-net… -- Colin Fee tfeccles(a)gmail.com

8 years, 5 months

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luv-main June 2014