June 2020 - luv-main - example.com

hardware trends and hardware library
by Russell Coker 29 Jun '20

29 Jun '20

https://etbe.coker.com.au/2020/06/19/storage-trends/ I wrote the above blog post about trends in consumer level storage. Basically SSDs are getting so cheap that for large portions of the market spinning media makes no sense. If you need less than 2TB of storage in a workstation or server then SSD or NVMe is probably the best choice. The cheapest SSDs are significantly cheaper than the cheapest hard drives. I'm sending all my spare hard drives that are less than 500G in size to e- waste. I'll keep some 500G disks in the hardware library but anything smaller doesn't seem worth using. Also I'm going to send to e-waste all hardware that's designed for 32bit Intel systems. While a P3 made a decent firewall system, the cheap SATA SSDs make 64bit systems comparable for power use so I don't think a P3 is any good for a firewall nowadays. If anyone wants to make any last minute requests for IDE disks etc let me know. Finally while we aren't having LUV meetings you can still get access to the hardware library. Email me off-list if there's stuff you need, I can leave it on my porch or drop it off to you if you live in an area that's near somewhere I visit. -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/

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PowerPC 64el QEMU problem
by Russell Coker 28 Jun '20

28 Jun '20

I am trying to run a virtual PPC64 system via QEMU on a Debian/Unstable AMD64 host. I have already got a s390x VM going (ssh root(a)s390x.coker.com.au password "SELINUX"). qemu-system-ppc64 -drive format=raw,file=/vmstore/ppc64,if=virtio -nographic - m 1024 -kernel /boot/ppc64/vmlinux-4.19.0-9-powerpc64le -initrd /boot/ppc64/ initrd.img-4.19.0-9-powerpc64le -curses -append "root=/dev/vda ro" Above is the minimal qemu command that I'm using. Below is the result, it stops after the "4." from "4.19.0-9". Copyright (c) 2004, 2017 IBM Corporation All rights reserved. This program and the accompanying materials are made available under the terms of the BSD License available at http://www.opensource.org/licenses/bsd-license.php Booting from memory... Linux ppc64le #1 SMP Debian 4. The kernel is from the package linux-image-4.19.0-9-powerpc64le which is a dependency of the package linux-image-ppc64el in Debian/Buster. The program qemu-system-ppc64 is from version 5.0-5 of the qemu-system-ppc package. Any suggestions on what I should try next? -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/

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Link to the video conference for today's discussion on cyber-security
by Alexar Pendashteh 20 Jun '20

20 Jun '20

Hey everyone! Here is the link for those who would like to join us in today's discussion on cyber-security: https://meet.google.com/ytx-vqct-bne This is provided to us by OWASP Foundation. You can find the details for the event on the following pages: https://www.meetup.com/Linux-Users-of-Victoria/events/271392426/ https://luv.asn.au/2020/06/20 Also, feel free to reply to this email with your feedback or comments on the topic. + Alexar -- [image: image.jpg] *Alexar Pendashteh* technologist / social entrepreneur https://github.com/pendashteh

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From the banning of MATLAB to the prospect of FOSS alternatives ...
by Wen Lin 19 Jun '20

19 Jun '20

https://www.smalltechnews.com/archives/159428 Title of the Article: Some Chinese colleges and universities are banned from MATLAB ,Turning to open source software to regain attention June 11, 2020 This is interesting. Implausible as it may be, it now seems that relying too heavily on proprietary software does carry a fair bit of risk! As the above news piece reported, at the moment the US is only banning certain US-made software (in this case, MATLAB) from being used by certain universities and research institutions in China. But then things tend to go down a slippery slope, wouldn't they? One day, it can be a whole country banned from using your favourite software, like MS Office, Photoshop, AutoCAD, ... all in the name of "National Security". No wonder more and more people are taking an interest in the Free and Open Source Software (FOSS for short) - Linux OS, LibreOffice, GIMP, OpenSSH, ... just to name a few! Just about any proprietary software out there, in any field, any sector, there is always the FOSS equivalent, ready to take its place. Like the software in this story - MATLAB. You can ban its use, but the students can easily find alternatives (e.g. SCILAB, R, or the Python programming language ...) that are not just as usable, but also free the users from the shackles of EULA's or the threat of ban ... That's why in recent times, from a city council to a University, and through to a whole third-world nation, the decision-makers are starting to think the unthinkable - ditching proprietary software for Free and Open Source alternatives! Sharing it here. Regards, Wen

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Free linksys KVM switch
by cory seligman 18 Jun '20

18 Jun '20

Hi all, I have a linksys KVM2KIT keyboard monitor mouse sharing switch. It’s vga and ps/2 only, so perhaps useless to almost everyone now, but it might find a home in a server room somewhere... Anyone??? (Tumbleweeds) I’m in west Brunswick, if anyone wants to come collect Cory Sent from my VT100

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Fwd: [free-software-melb-announce] FSM Jun 18 - Running a small business on Free Software — The Sandstorm Platform
by Wen Lin 17 Jun '20

17 Jun '20

Hi LUV, For anyone interested, the following online meeting organised by FSM is actually tomorrow (18 June) - 6:30 PM (AEST). FYI. Regards, Wen ---------- Forwarded message --------- From: PuZZleDucK <puzzleduck(a)gmail.com> Subject: [free-software-melb-announce] FSM Jun 18 - Running a small business on Free Software — The Sandstorm Platform To: <free-software-melb-announce(a)lists.softwarefreedom.com.au>, Free Software Melbourne <free-software-melb(a)lists.softwarefreedom.com.au> As Australia starts to ease restrictions and some businesses are opening up again while many continue to operate online we thought it might be a good time to look at what Free and Open Source Software is available for running a small business or personal productivity. Luckily for us there is the all-in-one solution that is Sandstorm. Sandstorm describes itself as a self-hostable web productivity suite.It is an easy to install and maintain server-side platform that provides seamless access to dozens of productivity and office applications. Sandstorm provides a secure platform and takes care of authentication, authorization, installation and space management so you can start being productive from the moment you get it set up. It does require you to have existing hosting or to run it locally using something like Docker, but it allows for simple authentication and installation of many applications once it's setup. There is also a rich ecosystem of applications supported which we'll talk about including EtherPad for collaborative editing, Draw.io for graphics, HackerSlides for presentations, Wekan for project tracking, FileDrop for secure file sharing and Collections for tying it all together... and that's just scratching the surface of applications and alternatives available! We’ll be meeting virtually via Big Blue Button (an open source video conferencing system we'll probably cover in the near future) at 6:30pm on Thursday the 18th of June. We'll update you with the URL as soon as we can. Details: Thursday 18th June, 6:30-8:00pm BBB Room: To Be Announced Meeting Tips: Mute your mic when joining or not talking and headsets are recommended to reduce feedback. _______________________________________________ Free-software-melb-announce mailing list Free-software-melb-announce(a)lists.softwarefreedom.com.au https://lists.softwarefreedom.com.au/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/free-software… Free Software Melbourne home page: http://www.freesoftware.asn.au/melb/

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Buying Servers
by Russell Coker 17 Jun '20

17 Jun '20

For a long time I've had a good history with Dell servers. I currently have a PowerEdge Tower 1xx series at home, a LUV member has my previous PowerEdge Tower 1xx series at his home, and I've got a bunch of clients happily using 1xx series systems and one client with a PowerEdge Tower 630 (18*3.5" SATA disks running nicely on ZFS). Now I've ordered a 1xx series for a client in May and it looks like it won't arrive until July, the client is not happy at all. What's a good affordable low end name brand server system where I can get delivery in a reasonable time period? Just need 2*SATA disks, ECC RAM, and nothing else special (don't need redundant PSUs). IBM had always impressed me with their gear and Lenovo has done well with Thinkpads so I checked out their servers but their web site broke. -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/

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via Linux Weekly News: Second Debian Med COVID-19 hackathon
by Rodney Brown 16 Jun '20

16 Jun '20

https://lwn.net/Articles/822614/ The Debian Med team joined a COVID-19 Biohackathon last April and is planing on doing it again on June 15-21. ... https://salsa.debian.org/med-team/community/2020-covid19-hackathon/-/wikis/…

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FOSS Distributed database
by Russell Coker 14 Jun '20

14 Jun '20

Is there any good FOSS distributed database that's not a heap of Maven rubbish that can't be supported in a distribution? I've been briefly looking at Cockroach, Hbase, Voldemort, Ignite Accumulo, and of course I had tried Cassandra at a LUV event. All the ones I looked at in detail couldn't be packaged for Debian because they used Maven for the build system and a build process that downloads java programs from the web doesn't fit with reproducible builds. I presume that the others which aren't in Debian are in a similar situation. Does anyone know of a good candidate that could be packaged for Debian? Failing that which of the ones that suck too badly for inclusion in Debian don't suck so badly that they are horrible to use? -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/

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Squirrelmail
by Russell Coker 09 Jun '20

09 Jun '20

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SquirrelMail The Wikipedia page indicates that Squirrelmail is no longer maintained. I've had a problem reported with it after upgrading to PHP 7.3. Is there a good replacement for Squirrelmail? Something simple and lightweight that just gets the job done. Not Horde. -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/

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