iPhone – mintCast https://mintcast.org The podcast by the Linux Mint community for all users of Linux Wed, 30 Jun 2021 05:30:13 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=7.1 https://mintcast.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/cropped-small-logo-32x32.png iPhone – mintCast https://mintcast.org 32 32 mintCast false episodic CC-BY-SA 4.0 CC-BY-SA 4.0 podcast iPhone – mintCast https://mintcast.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/big-logo-1600.png https://mintcast.org TV-G 164426984 mintCast 364 – The Better Beta https://mintcast.org/mintcast-364-the-better-beta/ Wed, 30 Jun 2021 05:15:42 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=5118 Then, our news Linux Mint Beta is out! Rocky Linux is official, and Elementary OS tries Beta 2
In security, lost data
Download
]]> 2:24 Bi-Weekly Wanderings
53:37 The News
1:36:34 Security Update
1:42:59 Announcements & Outro

First up, in our Wanderings, I go ECO friendly, Josh’s DHCP fails, Joe is heavily medicated, and Tony is playing with EndeavorOS while on holiday

Then, our news Linux Mint Beta is out! Rocky Linux is official, and Elementary OS tries Beta 2

In security, lost data

Twitter. Discord. Telegram. Matrix. Reddit.

Bi-Weekly Wanderings

The News

Security Update

Announcements

Wrap-up

Before we leave, we want to make sure to acknowledge some of the people who make mintCast possible …

  • Owen Peery for our audio editing, Josh Lowe for all his work on the website, Hobstar for our logo, initrd for the animated Discord logo, and Londoner for our time sync
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • HPR for our backup Mumble room
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem!>
]]> full 5118 mintCast 318.5 – Syncing Files https://mintcast.org/mintcast-318-5-syncing-files/ Wed, 02 Oct 2019 06:09:46 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=3942 And finally, community feedback!
Download
]]>

Download

In our Innards section, we cover backups like Rsync, Nextcloud and some underlying storage.

And finally, community feedback!

INNARDS:

  • Joe
    • Rsync
      • Used as the back end for most backup systems 
      • works on most operating systems
      • It has been around for 23 years!
      • Comes stock on nearly every linux operating system
      • I have used it in production on several systems for back ups or syncing data on request
      • fairly standard setup for the command 
        • rsync [options] from to
      • what makes it great is the way that it will remember where you left off with a broken or partial sync.
        • so if you lose your connection you can run the same command again and pick up where you left off
          • especially if you use -P which will allow you to watch the progress and continue from where you left off even if it is mid file
        • The -a flag is great as it preserves symbolic links so you will not get stuck in a loop the way that it was possible to do with scp
      • Plus for backups it will only move files that it can verify have changed which makes it faster and use less data.
        • It will check file sizes and time stamps to see if it needs to sync a new file
        • You can set it to instead check hashes for differences which is much slower but it will find all the changes
        • –checksum is the option to add for this
      • Great to mix with cron for automating backups on your own
        • timing can be a small issue if your backup runs long so don’t set it up to run every minute
    • Resilio sync/btsync/bittorrent sync
      • Does not use rsync
      • uses the bittorrent protocol
      • Started out as bittorrent sync but everyone called it btsync and then when they tried to switch to a paid model they changed to resilio sync
      • The setup is very similar to other syncing programs.  Install the software and setup the user permissions and the places that it will have access to
        • After setup you pick the folders that you want to share
        • then you choose to share it and either a link a code or a qr code is generated
        • you add this to resilio sync on another machine or multiple machines
        • you can choose to limit this by making a single use code or a code that expires after a few days or by leaving it open
        • you can also choose if the other clients will have write permissions on the data or just read
        • you can limit it further on systems by controlling the user permissions and or setting up resilio under its own user
      • Works across multiple OS’s including android
      • The more nodes that you have setup with the data that you are syncing the faster it will be synced across devices.
      • it is self hosted so your data will only be on your computers
      • as for the bittorrent protocol here is how it works
        • Files within the set shared space are broken into small parts then shared then reassembled on the “client side” when all portions are received
        • the smaller files are easier to send then larger files would be
        • so you could be downloading multiple small portions from separate locations at the same time which greatly increases speed based on how many nodes that you have
        • Much like with torrents it is possible for none of the nodes to have a complete copy and still to get a complete copy on all the systems by the end as long as all portions are distributed.
      • it is possible to backup an entire system with resilio sync if you give the group or user enough permissions or run it as root.  
      • better for files that you want to backup but there are pitfalls
        • if you have write permissions on all the nodes then if one of them gets corrupt it will copy across all the systems and all will be corrupt
      • Great to run commands on your home system
        • very tinkery tool when used this way
        • just as an example, set up a cron script to execute a bash script every minute, this bash script looks for a file within the btsync location.  If it is there then you run the commands placed within this file and rename the file with a date stamp so that it is not picked up again(you can also get creative with the output if you want)
        • it is seriously a one line command ‘bash -i /path/to/filename >> filename2’ to execute commands and record output and then mv the filename to doneFilename then echo filename2 >> doneFilename and rm filename2
  • Leo
    • The Nextcloud setup was too easy! (For someone that tinkers all the time)
      • sudo snap install nextcloud
      • sudo nextcloud.manual-install leo password
      • sudo nextcloud.occ config:system:set trusted_domains 1 –value=domainname
      • sudo nextcloud.enable-https self-signed
    • If you’re storing your files on external storage like myself, you’ll need to install a removable media plugin.
      • sudo snap connect nextcloud:removable-media
    • The config file lives at
      • sudo nano /var/snap/nextcloud/current/nextcloud/config/config.php
    • Finally, move your data to the new place
      • sudo mv /var/snap/nextcloud/common/nextcloud/data /media/nextcloud/data
    • Nextcloud auto backups
    • In the settings, there is an Auto Upload Photos/Videos toggle.
    • Underneath, define where you want the folder to live, then turn the toggle on. Like magic, Nextcloud starts to suck up all of the files you specify!
    • I haven’t tried the feature with anything other than Photos and Videos, but for a phone, those are typically the types of files you’re trying to backup.
    • For the desktop, the sync is similar. For every device I’ve installed the Nextcloud client on, I have the Desktop directory synced across all the devices. This is fantastic for me since that’s where all my working files go. I just have to ensure that the client is on to do the sync and my files are there, updated, and ready to be edited.
    • Thoughts
    • Overall, the setup is easy if you’ve played with stuff like this before. But, compared to a traditional setup with a manual install of a database, php and webserver, it was extremely easy.
    • The best part of the entire setup is that I’m bad at remembering to do manually backup files with a drag and drop. So, as long as they’re in the right place, I don’t have to do anything!

 

  • Tony W
  • DISCLAIMER before beginning: This is from a beginner’s perspective.
    • RAID, ZFS Z pools
      • Reasons to use:
        • Allow data redundancy across multiple drives/partitions
        • Can simply mirror a drive
        • Windows has a version of this
        • Use multiple drives/partitions as one volume
      • Typically used for server but can be used for home machines
      • Still recommend backup to other machine or drive
    • RAID
      • RAID can be hardware or software RAID 
        • Hardware RAID is a bit legacy
      • Ubuntu offers mdadm for software RAID management
      • RAID 0 (Disk striping): RAID 0 splits data across any number of disks allowing higher data throughput. …
      • RAID 1 (Disk Mirroring): …
      • RAID 5 (Striping with parity): …
      • RAID 6 (Striping with double parity): …
      • RAID 10 (Striping + Mirroring):
      • Doesn’t seem to be much reason to use software RAID mdadm over ZFS?
      • Windows offers mirrored volume, similar to RAID 1
    • ZFS 
      • Supported natively in Ubuntu 18.04
      • FREENAS uses ZFS
      • ZFS Pools are equivalent of RAID levels

VIBRATIONS:

Tony – Peter Jones on Telegram writes

Really sorry, but didn’t enjoy this episode (317.5). Toyam spoke very passionately, but didn’t seem the right kind of distro to get a guest on about based on the MintCast audience. Anyway. I’m sure others loved it. And I can’t enjoy every episode!

I responded 

[In reply to Peter Jones]

I can see where you are coming from on the type of distro that Void is, but I think that the interview does highlight that it is possible to get involved with Linux projects, and the amount of work that the maintainers of Distros and the software we use on a day to day basis do so we get to use fantastic software. Mint might be an easier distro for a beginner to use but the work that has gone into it is as much if not more. Also it highlights that many of these distros and software development projects are running on very few people making it all happen. My feeling is even if you are not a coder is that there are many ways you can support, from beta testing and reporting bugs, to getting involved with documentation or creating wallpapers. If you feel that’s not possible then send the project a couple of dollars to help the cause and show your appreciation, or if you can’t even afford that, just send a message to say thank you for the work they are doing.

Peter replied

Hi, running a website and forum I understand the small team thing. Thanks for reading my feedback though and you make fair comments.

Stephen Heckler also commented on this episode:

I agree with Peter on this one, Void is pretty niche, and Toyam’s take on it even more so due to being a maintainer. mintCast has always been pretty broad within the Linux world and approachable

Leo – A discussion about Gentoo and compiling in Telegram

Londoner writes:

BTW, after I did Gentoo I installed Plasma base and some other packages. Compiling the Falkon browser (or rather qtwebengine) took 4 days on my i7 desktop! Thought it would never finish

Leo

The Juno Computer Gemini was finally reviewed by Oliver Kelly!

Oliver writes:

I reached out to them asked if I can help promote them as a company and write about them, they then offered to loan a laptop to review. They paid for shipping the laptop and collection. No pressure to write a positive review, to be fair I should have stated, but genuinely was a really nice laptop but £770 is steep for me for how it feels compared to my works xps , like I said , that’s the only other laptop I have to compare quality and feel to.

Writeup Link: https://0lzi.tk/episode-009-gemini15/

Tony H – Stan R – From tonight’s chat room

The new web page has really improved since the last show. It seemed that nothing was working. This time around things on web page seem much more usable to me.

Me – Yes Josh has put a lot of work in to get it working right

Stan – I had sent a number of complaining messages, then within a few hours it was either fixed or I realized what I was doing wrong.

Stan has also asked if it would be possible to put the show timer on the main page of the site.

CHECK THIS OUT:

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

Next episode will be Sunday October 6th, 2PM CDT, 7PM UTC

WRAP-UP:

Before we leave, we want to make sure to acknowledge some of the people who make mintCast possible …

  • Josh Lowe for all his work on the website and the livestream (We’ve had over 60 listeners today on the backup mixer platform and brought on some new listeners who’ve never heard of the podcast)
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem!>
]]> full 50:54 3942 mintCast 318.5 – Syncing Files (mp3) https://mintcast.org/mintcast-318-5-syncing-files-mp3/ Wed, 02 Oct 2019 06:07:15 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=3940 And finally, community feedback!
Download
]]>

Download

In our Innards section, we cover backups like Rsync, Nextcloud and some underlying storage.

And finally, community feedback!

INNARDS:

  • Joe
    • Rsync
      • Used as the back end for most backup systems 
      • works on most operating systems
      • It has been around for 23 years!
      • Comes stock on nearly every linux operating system
      • I have used it in production on several systems for back ups or syncing data on request
      • fairly standard setup for the command 
        • rsync [options] from to
      • what makes it great is the way that it will remember where you left off with a broken or partial sync.
        • so if you lose your connection you can run the same command again and pick up where you left off
          • especially if you use -P which will allow you to watch the progress and continue from where you left off even if it is mid file
        • The -a flag is great as it preserves symbolic links so you will not get stuck in a loop the way that it was possible to do with scp
      • Plus for backups it will only move files that it can verify have changed which makes it faster and use less data.
        • It will check file sizes and time stamps to see if it needs to sync a new file
        • You can set it to instead check hashes for differences which is much slower but it will find all the changes
        • –checksum is the option to add for this
      • Great to mix with cron for automating backups on your own
        • timing can be a small issue if your backup runs long so don’t set it up to run every minute
    • Resilio sync/btsync/bittorrent sync
      • Does not use rsync
      • uses the bittorrent protocol
      • Started out as bittorrent sync but everyone called it btsync and then when they tried to switch to a paid model they changed to resilio sync
      • The setup is very similar to other syncing programs.  Install the software and setup the user permissions and the places that it will have access to
        • After setup you pick the folders that you want to share
        • then you choose to share it and either a link a code or a qr code is generated
        • you add this to resilio sync on another machine or multiple machines
        • you can choose to limit this by making a single use code or a code that expires after a few days or by leaving it open
        • you can also choose if the other clients will have write permissions on the data or just read
        • you can limit it further on systems by controlling the user permissions and or setting up resilio under its own user
      • Works across multiple OS’s including android
      • The more nodes that you have setup with the data that you are syncing the faster it will be synced across devices.
      • it is self hosted so your data will only be on your computers
      • as for the bittorrent protocol here is how it works
        • Files within the set shared space are broken into small parts then shared then reassembled on the “client side” when all portions are received
        • the smaller files are easier to send then larger files would be
        • so you could be downloading multiple small portions from separate locations at the same time which greatly increases speed based on how many nodes that you have
        • Much like with torrents it is possible for none of the nodes to have a complete copy and still to get a complete copy on all the systems by the end as long as all portions are distributed.
      • it is possible to backup an entire system with resilio sync if you give the group or user enough permissions or run it as root.  
      • better for files that you want to backup but there are pitfalls
        • if you have write permissions on all the nodes then if one of them gets corrupt it will copy across all the systems and all will be corrupt
      • Great to run commands on your home system
        • very tinkery tool when used this way
        • just as an example, set up a cron script to execute a bash script every minute, this bash script looks for a file within the btsync location.  If it is there then you run the commands placed within this file and rename the file with a date stamp so that it is not picked up again(you can also get creative with the output if you want)
        • it is seriously a one line command ‘bash -i /path/to/filename >> filename2’ to execute commands and record output and then mv the filename to doneFilename then echo filename2 >> doneFilename and rm filename2
  • Leo
    • The Nextcloud setup was too easy! (For someone that tinkers all the time)
      • sudo snap install nextcloud
      • sudo nextcloud.manual-install leo password
      • sudo nextcloud.occ config:system:set trusted_domains 1 –value=domainname
      • sudo nextcloud.enable-https self-signed
    • If you’re storing your files on external storage like myself, you’ll need to install a removable media plugin.
      • sudo snap connect nextcloud:removable-media
    • The config file lives at
      • sudo nano /var/snap/nextcloud/current/nextcloud/config/config.php
    • Finally, move your data to the new place
      • sudo mv /var/snap/nextcloud/common/nextcloud/data /media/nextcloud/data
    • Nextcloud auto backups
    • In the settings, there is an Auto Upload Photos/Videos toggle.
    • Underneath, define where you want the folder to live, then turn the toggle on. Like magic, Nextcloud starts to suck up all of the files you specify!
    • I haven’t tried the feature with anything other than Photos and Videos, but for a phone, those are typically the types of files you’re trying to backup.
    • For the desktop, the sync is similar. For every device I’ve installed the Nextcloud client on, I have the Desktop directory synced across all the devices. This is fantastic for me since that’s where all my working files go. I just have to ensure that the client is on to do the sync and my files are there, updated, and ready to be edited.
    • Thoughts
    • Overall, the setup is easy if you’ve played with stuff like this before. But, compared to a traditional setup with a manual install of a database, php and webserver, it was extremely easy.
    • The best part of the entire setup is that I’m bad at remembering to do manually backup files with a drag and drop. So, as long as they’re in the right place, I don’t have to do anything!

 

  • Tony W
  • DISCLAIMER before beginning: This is from a beginner’s perspective.
    • RAID, ZFS Z pools
      • Reasons to use:
        • Allow data redundancy across multiple drives/partitions
        • Can simply mirror a drive
        • Windows has a version of this
        • Use multiple drives/partitions as one volume
      • Typically used for server but can be used for home machines
      • Still recommend backup to other machine or drive
    • RAID
      • RAID can be hardware or software RAID 
        • Hardware RAID is a bit legacy
      • Ubuntu offers mdadm for software RAID management
      • RAID 0 (Disk striping): RAID 0 splits data across any number of disks allowing higher data throughput. …
      • RAID 1 (Disk Mirroring): …
      • RAID 5 (Striping with parity): …
      • RAID 6 (Striping with double parity): …
      • RAID 10 (Striping + Mirroring):
      • Doesn’t seem to be much reason to use software RAID mdadm over ZFS?
      • Windows offers mirrored volume, similar to RAID 1
    • ZFS 
      • Supported natively in Ubuntu 18.04
      • FREENAS uses ZFS
      • ZFS Pools are equivalent of RAID levels

VIBRATIONS:

Tony – Peter Jones on Telegram writes

Really sorry, but didn’t enjoy this episode (317.5). Toyam spoke very passionately, but didn’t seem the right kind of distro to get a guest on about based on the MintCast audience. Anyway. I’m sure others loved it. And I can’t enjoy every episode!

I responded 

[In reply to Peter Jones]

I can see where you are coming from on the type of distro that Void is, but I think that the interview does highlight that it is possible to get involved with Linux projects, and the amount of work that the maintainers of Distros and the software we use on a day to day basis do so we get to use fantastic software. Mint might be an easier distro for a beginner to use but the work that has gone into it is as much if not more. Also it highlights that many of these distros and software development projects are running on very few people making it all happen. My feeling is even if you are not a coder is that there are many ways you can support, from beta testing and reporting bugs, to getting involved with documentation or creating wallpapers. If you feel that’s not possible then send the project a couple of dollars to help the cause and show your appreciation, or if you can’t even afford that, just send a message to say thank you for the work they are doing.

Peter replied

Hi, running a website and forum I understand the small team thing. Thanks for reading my feedback though and you make fair comments.

Stephen Heckler also commented on this episode:

I agree with Peter on this one, Void is pretty niche, and Toyam’s take on it even more so due to being a maintainer. mintCast has always been pretty broad within the Linux world and approachable

Leo – A discussion about Gentoo and compiling in Telegram

Londoner writes:

BTW, after I did Gentoo I installed Plasma base and some other packages. Compiling the Falkon browser (or rather qtwebengine) took 4 days on my i7 desktop! Thought it would never finish

Leo

The Juno Computer Gemini was finally reviewed by Oliver Kelly!

Oliver writes:

I reached out to them asked if I can help promote them as a company and write about them, they then offered to loan a laptop to review. They paid for shipping the laptop and collection. No pressure to write a positive review, to be fair I should have stated, but genuinely was a really nice laptop but £770 is steep for me for how it feels compared to my works xps , like I said , that’s the only other laptop I have to compare quality and feel to.

Writeup Link: https://0lzi.tk/episode-009-gemini15/

Tony H – Stan R – From tonight’s chat room

The new web page has really improved since the last show. It seemed that nothing was working. This time around things on web page seem much more usable to me.

Me – Yes Josh has put a lot of work in to get it working right

Stan – I had sent a number of complaining messages, then within a few hours it was either fixed or I realized what I was doing wrong.

Stan has also asked if it would be possible to put the show timer on the main page of the site.

CHECK THIS OUT:

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

Next episode will be Sunday October 6th, 2PM CDT, 7PM UTC

WRAP-UP:

Before we leave, we want to make sure to acknowledge some of the people who make mintCast possible …

  • Josh Lowe for all his work on the website and the livestream (We’ve had over 60 listeners today on the backup mixer platform and brought on some new listeners who’ve never heard of the podcast)
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem!>
]]> full 54:34 3940 mintCast 318 – Melted Plastic https://mintcast.org/mintcast-318-melted-plastic/ Wed, 25 Sep 2019 20:38:44 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=3932 Then, in our News, we cover Ubuntu’s 32-bit library support, the top 5 snaps per distro, the PineTime, and more.
In security, we talk locks, DoH and Lastpass
Download
]]>

Download

This week, in our Wanderings, Leo writes about Nextcloud, Bo spreads the Linux love, Tony Hughes can’t stop Linuxing, even on holiday, Josh considers the new iPhone 11 (wait really??) after yet another broken Pixel 3 , Joe spelunks into splunk, and Tony Watts is building a server.

Then, in our News, we cover Ubuntu’s 32-bit library support, the top 5 snaps per distro, the PineTime, and more.
In security, we talk locks, DoH and Lastpass

WANDERINGS:

  • Leo
    • Finally got some writing done on my blog! Only took me three months to get back in the saddle.
    • I’m using two 1TB external USB drives for Nextcloud. One for the main storage and one for a nightly backup.
    • I’m loving the nextcloud auto-backup for photos on my phone.
    • I only allow Nextcloud to be accessed on the local network, so, through the power of OpenVPN, I’m able to access Nextcloud everywhere!
    • Considered doing this in the cloud, but price-wise, it’s hard to compete with established solutions like Google Drive or OneDrive.
    • But since we don’t use a lot of storage on the show, Nextcloud might still be a good solution at a place like DigitalOcean. $5/mo for 20GB storage that’s fully under our control.
    • I’ve dropped plank!
  • Bo
    • I blew up my wife’s PC
    • Guy at FNM saw my Linux hat and asked about Linux Mint
    • I’ve paid for, but not scheduled my LPIC exam
  • Tony H
    • I have spent the last week in Brussels and had a great if tiring Holiday on the day we went on a trip to Bruges I walked for hours around this very picturesque medieval town, tripling my normal average of about 5-6000 steps. 
    • I joined the BDLL europe live stream on the Saturday evening we arrived in Brussels, just because your on holiday doesn’t stop the geeking 🙂   
    • Researching some refurbished laptops and desktop PC’s to help a couple of friends upgrade their hardware. I’ll be helping them buy and setup the new PC’s now that I’m back home. 
    • Installing Manjaro on my Acer One 2008 8Gb SSD Netbook, installed fine problems with updating will need to play some more. Also installed the MX19.2.1Beta on my Lenovo X201 today and found a bug and decided to do my first bug report, so I created a Bugzilla account and the whole process took less than 10 minutes. Another Linux first for me.
  • Josh
    • I learnt that Google can’t make good glass to put on their phones.
    • Android 10 has broke my banking app.
    • Considering selling the replacement they’re sending me as it’s new phone season.
    • Maybe an iPhone 11:
    • Reasons:
      • New audio stream after people wanted change.
      • The refund for my GPU actually came through! The RTX 2060, what I replaced it with, is really nice. It’s actually gone up £50 in price now so I got it at the right time.
      • We sold 66 magazines!
  • Joe
    • Spent the week without my tablet so was not able to write down ideas as they came to me
    • Attempted to fix the issues that i am having with anlinux on my phone and no such luck so far
      • Created another user and gave sudo permissions but still getting an error when i use it
      • several low level applications will not launch and no errors thrown.
      • i may nuke and start from start.
      • tried looking for some write ups on how to do it properly but i have not found a good one yet
    • Setup tuxtyping for my son
      • He has enjoyed it but he went through most of it very quickly
      • On the lookout for alternatives
      • Also need to get a new battery for the hp mini that he is using for this
      • Picked up a mouse and setup a keyboard with colored stickers for where fingers go
    • 5150 memorial show
      • Went well, Thanks for everyone that came on and talked about 50 and his shenanigans 
    • Studying splunk
      • Seems like an interesting tool and a good thing to know but i am wondering if we need another centralized tool when we can access all of the logs from one location anyway.
    • Started automating everything at work
      • Driving to increase automation through scripting
      • Creating scripts to automate some of the DB cleanup that we do
        • Also deletions 
        • Moving backups
        • Going to make the execution step as copy and paste as possible
        • Going to have a couple of scripts setup for the basic things that we do all the time
          • Hit execute and done
        • Python Python Python
      • Can’t completely automate as we still need to enter db names and paths but it is a start
    • Oscar cpap analysis
      • Choose linux
      • Got it installed hopefully i will get to test it out this afternoon
    • Havent finished the wheel of time series yet.  Had to replace book 8 with a new copy because the copy I had was missing a chapter
    • Stepped up my gym time.  I now do lunches at the gym along with my couple of times a week in the evenings.
    • Had a good time at the local lug, good conversations about dex and linux in general ..
  • Tony W
    • Upgraded a laptop from Win7 to Win10
      • Free upgrade path still works – license fully active
    • Working on a server build
      • Core Duo server tower with 5 drive bays.  8GB RAM, 3 X 2TB hard drives
        • Got hard drives on ebay reasonably – WD caviar green (not the best or most reliable but cheap and I plan to have some fault tolerance)
      • Currently reinstalling heat sink & fan
      • Planning to use either FreeNAS or Ubuntu Server (probably with minimal DE)
    • Finally broke down and had the Oneplus repaired properly
          • Oneplus repair process pretty impressive
          • Whole process shipping and all took about 3 business dayStill a great phone at almost 3 years old
            • 6GB RAM, 128GB storage
          • Running Lineage OS as Oxygen OS will stop getting updates sometime soon
    • Consolidated work and personal mobile phone
        • Both lines/SIM cards in the OnePlus 3T
        • The corporate solution on android is really nice
          • Sandboxed file system for work apps
          • App drawer separated into work and personal
          • Work versions of GMail apps, file manager, Play Store,etc
    • Going to start troubleshooting a Dell all-in-one with suspected bad hard disk
      • The camera is better than the Pixel.
      • Pixel has failed on me twice.
      • Pixel 4 is rumoured to be £900
      • Third party android companies have bad update support.
      • Third party android companies atm are a bit risky, especially with the Huawei stuff. They’re new phone doesn’t have Chrome, Play store or Gmail, and you can’t sideload them either

NEWS:

SECURITY UPDATE:

Tavis Ormandy: “LastPass could leak the last used credentials due to a cache not being updated. This was because you can bypass the tab credential cache being populated by including the login form in an unexpected way!”

WRAP-UP:

Before we leave, we want to make sure to acknowledge some of the people who make mintCast possible …

  • Josh Lowe for all his work on the website and the livestream (We’ve had over 60 listeners today on the backup mixer platform and brought on some new listeners who’ve never heard of the podcast)
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem!>
]]> full 1:27:42 3932 mintCast 318 – Melted Plastic (mp3) https://mintcast.org/mintcast-318-melted-plastic-mp3/ Wed, 25 Sep 2019 20:36:37 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=3930 Then, in our News, we cover Ubuntu’s 32-bit library support, the top 5 snaps per distro, the PineTime, and more.
In security, we talk locks, DoH and Lastpass
Download
]]>

Download

This week, in our Wanderings, Leo writes about Nextcloud, Bo spreads the Linux love, Tony Hughes can’t stop Linuxing, even on holiday, Josh considers the new iPhone 11 (wait really??) after yet another broken Pixel 3 , Joe spelunks into splunk, and Tony Watts is building a server.

Then, in our News, we cover Ubuntu’s 32-bit library support, the top 5 snaps per distro, the PineTime, and more.
In security, we talk locks, DoH and Lastpass

WANDERINGS:

  • Leo
    • Finally got some writing done on my blog! Only took me three months to get back in the saddle.
    • I’m using two 1TB external USB drives for Nextcloud. One for the main storage and one for a nightly backup.
    • I’m loving the nextcloud auto-backup for photos on my phone.
    • I only allow Nextcloud to be accessed on the local network, so, through the power of OpenVPN, I’m able to access Nextcloud everywhere!
    • Considered doing this in the cloud, but price-wise, it’s hard to compete with established solutions like Google Drive or OneDrive.
    • But since we don’t use a lot of storage on the show, Nextcloud might still be a good solution at a place like DigitalOcean. $5/mo for 20GB storage that’s fully under our control.
    • I’ve dropped plank!
  • Bo
    • I blew up my wife’s PC
    • Guy at FNM saw my Linux hat and asked about Linux Mint
    • I’ve paid for, but not scheduled my LPIC exam
  • Tony H
    • I have spent the last week in Brussels and had a great if tiring Holiday on the day we went on a trip to Bruges I walked for hours around this very picturesque medieval town, tripling my normal average of about 5-6000 steps. 
    • I joined the BDLL europe live stream on the Saturday evening we arrived in Brussels, just because your on holiday doesn’t stop the geeking 🙂   
    • Researching some refurbished laptops and desktop PC’s to help a couple of friends upgrade their hardware. I’ll be helping them buy and setup the new PC’s now that I’m back home. 
    • Installing Manjaro on my Acer One 2008 8Gb SSD Netbook, installed fine problems with updating will need to play some more. Also installed the MX19.2.1Beta on my Lenovo X201 today and found a bug and decided to do my first bug report, so I created a Bugzilla account and the whole process took less than 10 minutes. Another Linux first for me.
  • Josh
    • I learnt that Google can’t make good glass to put on their phones.
    • Android 10 has broke my banking app.
    • Considering selling the replacement they’re sending me as it’s new phone season.
    • Maybe an iPhone 11:
    • Reasons:
      • New audio stream after people wanted change.
      • The refund for my GPU actually came through! The RTX 2060, what I replaced it with, is really nice. It’s actually gone up £50 in price now so I got it at the right time.
      • We sold 66 magazines!
  • Joe
    • Spent the week without my tablet so was not able to write down ideas as they came to me
    • Attempted to fix the issues that i am having with anlinux on my phone and no such luck so far
      • Created another user and gave sudo permissions but still getting an error when i use it
      • several low level applications will not launch and no errors thrown.
      • i may nuke and start from start.
      • tried looking for some write ups on how to do it properly but i have not found a good one yet
    • Setup tuxtyping for my son
      • He has enjoyed it but he went through most of it very quickly
      • On the lookout for alternatives
      • Also need to get a new battery for the hp mini that he is using for this
      • Picked up a mouse and setup a keyboard with colored stickers for where fingers go
    • 5150 memorial show
      • Went well, Thanks for everyone that came on and talked about 50 and his shenanigans 
    • Studying splunk
      • Seems like an interesting tool and a good thing to know but i am wondering if we need another centralized tool when we can access all of the logs from one location anyway.
    • Started automating everything at work
      • Driving to increase automation through scripting
      • Creating scripts to automate some of the DB cleanup that we do
        • Also deletions 
        • Moving backups
        • Going to make the execution step as copy and paste as possible
        • Going to have a couple of scripts setup for the basic things that we do all the time
          • Hit execute and done
        • Python Python Python
      • Can’t completely automate as we still need to enter db names and paths but it is a start
    • Oscar cpap analysis
      • Choose linux
      • Got it installed hopefully i will get to test it out this afternoon
    • Havent finished the wheel of time series yet.  Had to replace book 8 with a new copy because the copy I had was missing a chapter
    • Stepped up my gym time.  I now do lunches at the gym along with my couple of times a week in the evenings.
    • Had a good time at the local lug, good conversations about dex and linux in general ..
  • Tony W
    • Upgraded a laptop from Win7 to Win10
      • Free upgrade path still works – license fully active
    • Working on a server build
      • Core Duo server tower with 5 drive bays.  8GB RAM, 3 X 2TB hard drives
        • Got hard drives on ebay reasonably – WD caviar green (not the best or most reliable but cheap and I plan to have some fault tolerance)
      • Currently reinstalling heat sink & fan
      • Planning to use either FreeNAS or Ubuntu Server (probably with minimal DE)
    • Finally broke down and had the Oneplus repaired properly
          • Oneplus repair process pretty impressive
          • Whole process shipping and all took about 3 business dayStill a great phone at almost 3 years old
            • 6GB RAM, 128GB storage
          • Running Lineage OS as Oxygen OS will stop getting updates sometime soon
    • Consolidated work and personal mobile phone
        • Both lines/SIM cards in the OnePlus 3T
        • The corporate solution on android is really nice
          • Sandboxed file system for work apps
          • App drawer separated into work and personal
          • Work versions of GMail apps, file manager, Play Store,etc
    • Going to start troubleshooting a Dell all-in-one with suspected bad hard disk
      • The camera is better than the Pixel.
      • Pixel has failed on me twice.
      • Pixel 4 is rumoured to be £900
      • Third party android companies have bad update support.
      • Third party android companies atm are a bit risky, especially with the Huawei stuff. They’re new phone doesn’t have Chrome, Play store or Gmail, and you can’t sideload them either

NEWS:

SECURITY UPDATE:

Tavis Ormandy: “LastPass could leak the last used credentials due to a cache not being updated. This was because you can bypass the tab credential cache being populated by including the login form in an unexpected way!”

WRAP-UP:

Before we leave, we want to make sure to acknowledge some of the people who make mintCast possible …

  • Josh Lowe for all his work on the website and the livestream (We’ve had over 60 listeners today on the backup mixer platform and brought on some new listeners who’ve never heard of the podcast)
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem!>
]]> full 1:32:02 3930 mintCast 317 – Yak Shaving https://mintcast.org/mintcast-317-yak-shaving/ Wed, 11 Sep 2019 05:57:14 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=3880 Then, in our news we cover the Linux Mint Monthly News, exFAT in the kernel, iPhone and Android exploits and the new Pinebook Pro
In security, we talk Firefox and why you should give it another try
Download
]]>

Download

This week, in our Wanderings, Toyam (Void Linux maintainer) shaves a yak and gets to soldering, I blew up and recovered my Mint install, Tony’s been editing audio and LUGing, Josh has been playing with Windows Subsystem for Linux , and Joe finally gets the Note 10

Then, in our news we cover the Linux Mint Monthly News, exFAT in the kernel, iPhone and Android exploits and the new Pinebook Pro

In security, we talk Firefox and why you should give it another try

WANDERINGS:

  • Toyam
    • Yak shaving: Need a calendar for my household, to share appointments and other plans, and can’t be Google, must work from the CLI…. Oh also should be offline compatible.
      • During a class last year I wrote the frontend for this calendar, but didn’t have a satisfactory backend.
      • So started investigating Wails, which lets you, like Electron, use javascript for your frontend, but Wails lets you build a golang backend.
        • Got Wails to support Void Linux.
        • But still working on linking my frontend with their backend.
    • Soldered parts onto a PCB I previously designed. I now regret choosing small parts (0402).
  • Leo
    • Broke my desktop Mint install by using ppa-purge for the padoka PPA so I can test the oibaf PPA for performance differences on my graphics card. Didn’t pay attention to what it was going to uninstall. It even makes you type in “Yes, do as I say!” Turns out, it uninstalled EVERYTHING. I watched icons disappear from Plank one-by-one. Checked the terminal and my jaw dropped. CTRL+C couldn’t save me here. SSDs are brutal for mistakes like this.
      • Luckily I don’t tinker with Mint on my laptop that way, or it could have been a bigger issue!
      • Timeshift saves the day.
      • Ended up reinstalling anyway since I still wanted to tinker with oibaf and didn’t want to go through recovery again. Backed up home, and started fresh.
    • Got a new mechanical keyboard for $15 after using some amazon credit that I didn’t know what to do with. Ended up buying a Velocifire 78-key keyboard with Outemu brown switches. They’re a little loud for my tastes, but it’s growing on me.
  • Tony H 
    • Editing the Audio for the last show, and was happy to say that it was the best effort I’ve made with the editing since I joined the show. For anyone out there trying to get to grips with audio recording and editing, stick with it as the only way you learn how it works is by doing it, you will find what works for you and your set up. We have a production guide that was written by Rob and Issac, and has been modified by us since, but you sometimes have to go with what works with the audio you have to work on and the setup that you have.
    • So for the next Distrohoppers digest review I’ve installed and been playing with OpenSUSE Tumbleweed, I seem to be developing a liking for rolling distributions. I’m also developing a liking for XFCE and installed this as the DE again as I had been using it in EndeavourOS.
    • We had the last meeting at the current makerspace venue which involved mainly taking away the equipment we wanted to transfer to the new venue (my Garage) over the next few weeks we will be reconnecting with our Linux roots and advertising the Saturday meetings in the local library as our LUG as it was in the old days. There maybe an opportunity to install the 3D printer at the library at a later date but for now we need to work on making my Garage fit to use the printer and Laser cutter at my place.
    • Getting more donations of PC’s, Les gave me a Tower from his uncle who passed away recently, this will be passed on to a charity after having Linux Mint 19.2 XFCE installed as its light on memory at only 2Gb of RAM.
    • Setting up a Dell Optiplex 7010 i5 with 8Gb Ram 240Gb SSD (Mint 19.2 Mate) and a 250Gb HDD (windows 10) For my better Half. Her old Pentium Dual core was well past its sell by date having Mint 17.3 and Windows 7 on a 160Gb HDD in dual boot mode. I set up Libreoffice Writer to ribbon mode as she uses MS Office at work so is more used to that interface. Her first comment once she went on line was that she can play some of the games that stopped working on the old PC due to an outdated Flash codec. One happy Wife, Life is Good 🙂  
    • Broke my phone today 🙁
  • Josh
    • Been playing around with WSL. I did use it back in the BETA stages but it’s much improved now.
    • I’ve found a VSCode plugin that allows you to edit files in folders that are within WSL. This allows me to do EduBlocks development in Windows. 
    • It’s quite obvious that this could now replace Linux for me and I do wonder what we will see in 10 years. Will linux distros be as popular or will Windows WSL get even better and be more popular?
    • Found a new OS called “CloudReady” from Neverware that lets you turn any PC into a Chromebook. It’s super cool!
    • I returned to school this week 🙁
    • The printed magazines are live! We’ve had so many orders, considering we thought we’d get none, we’re really happy. 
    • I got a new GPU. I opted for an Asus OC Nvidia RTX 2060. It’s amazing, the drivers actually work properly *cough AMD* and so far my experience of Nvidia is great. Real Time Ray Tracing is super cool, even though it’s not really implemented in anything. 
  • Joe
    • Have been taking a break from social media 
      • I am even behind on my podcast listening.
    • Have been listening to the wheel of time again
    • Got the Galaxy Note 10 plus
      • Still think it cost way too much but the wife convinced me to get it
      • Will come up with a full review
      • Android Dex is nice, works very well and easy
      • Linux on dex is not yet available for the Note 10+
      • The screen is brilliant. 
      • Transferred a 60 gig of data over wifi to the device very easily
      • Didnt even heat up using resilio sync with 60+ gb of data
      • Usb c dock worked without a hitch as did displaylink
        • Although Dex does not work over display link
      • Also want to test steam link with android on dex
    • Fixed an m.2 adapter with a faulty usb 3.0 b connection
    • Testing anlinux on the note 10+
      • It works very smooth, no hitches or delays that i have seen
      • Using ubuntu but it feels a lot more like trying to setup arch
        • Very minimal install 
        • Installed mate
        • Installed nautilus
        • Created a new user and attempted to install vlc
        • VLC installed but still will not launch
        • Further testing required
    • One of the few issues that i have found with my migration to the new phone is that a lot of my settings in podkicker did not migrate, although all of my subscriptions did so i have ended up with a backlog of pocasts

NEWS:

SECURITY UPDATE:

  • Firefox 69 blocks trackers by default!
    • By using the standard tracking profile built into the browser, Firefox 69 will block mainly 3rd party cookies: this means ads and their trackers.
    • Cryptominers are blocked by default!
    • Autoplay videos will be blocked by default, as well, and you can control how. Nothing at all, no audio only, or allow.
    • Firefox is also blocking Flash from automatically running without your explicit permission. The “Always activate” option has been removed.
    • This is for all platforms you can run Firefox on, not just Linux! That includes Windows, Android, MacOS and iOS.
    • New logo coming in 70!

WRAP-UP:

Before we leave, we want to make sure to acknowledge some of the people who make mintCast possible …

  • Josh Lowe for all his work on the website and the livestream (We’ve had over 60 listeners today on the backup mixer platform and brought on some new listeners who’ve never heard of the podcast)
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem!>
]]> full 1:05:18 3880 mintCast 317 – Yak Shaving (mp3) https://mintcast.org/mintcast-317-yak-shaving-mp3/ Wed, 11 Sep 2019 05:55:34 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=3878 Then, in our news we cover the Linux Mint Monthly News, exFAT in the kernel, iPhone and Android exploits and the new Pinebook Pro
In security, we talk Firefox and why you should give it another try
Download
]]>

Download

This week, in our Wanderings, Toyam (Void Linux maintainer) shaves a yak and gets to soldering, I blew up and recovered my Mint install, Tony’s been editing audio and LUGing, Josh has been playing with Windows Subsystem for Linux , and Joe finally gets the Note 10

Then, in our news we cover the Linux Mint Monthly News, exFAT in the kernel, iPhone and Android exploits and the new Pinebook Pro

In security, we talk Firefox and why you should give it another try

WANDERINGS:

  • Toyam
    • Yak shaving: Need a calendar for my household, to share appointments and other plans, and can’t be Google, must work from the CLI…. Oh also should be offline compatible.
      • During a class last year I wrote the frontend for this calendar, but didn’t have a satisfactory backend.
      • So started investigating Wails, which lets you, like Electron, use javascript for your frontend, but Wails lets you build a golang backend.
        • Got Wails to support Void Linux.
        • But still working on linking my frontend with their backend.
    • Soldered parts onto a PCB I previously designed. I now regret choosing small parts (0402).
  • Leo
    • Broke my desktop Mint install by using ppa-purge for the padoka PPA so I can test the oibaf PPA for performance differences on my graphics card. Didn’t pay attention to what it was going to uninstall. It even makes you type in “Yes, do as I say!” Turns out, it uninstalled EVERYTHING. I watched icons disappear from Plank one-by-one. Checked the terminal and my jaw dropped. CTRL+C couldn’t save me here. SSDs are brutal for mistakes like this.
      • Luckily I don’t tinker with Mint on my laptop that way, or it could have been a bigger issue!
      • Timeshift saves the day.
      • Ended up reinstalling anyway since I still wanted to tinker with oibaf and didn’t want to go through recovery again. Backed up home, and started fresh.
    • Got a new mechanical keyboard for $15 after using some amazon credit that I didn’t know what to do with. Ended up buying a Velocifire 78-key keyboard with Outemu brown switches. They’re a little loud for my tastes, but it’s growing on me.
  • Tony H 
    • Editing the Audio for the last show, and was happy to say that it was the best effort I’ve made with the editing since I joined the show. For anyone out there trying to get to grips with audio recording and editing, stick with it as the only way you learn how it works is by doing it, you will find what works for you and your set up. We have a production guide that was written by Rob and Issac, and has been modified by us since, but you sometimes have to go with what works with the audio you have to work on and the setup that you have.
    • So for the next Distrohoppers digest review I’ve installed and been playing with OpenSUSE Tumbleweed, I seem to be developing a liking for rolling distributions. I’m also developing a liking for XFCE and installed this as the DE again as I had been using it in EndeavourOS.
    • We had the last meeting at the current makerspace venue which involved mainly taking away the equipment we wanted to transfer to the new venue (my Garage) over the next few weeks we will be reconnecting with our Linux roots and advertising the Saturday meetings in the local library as our LUG as it was in the old days. There maybe an opportunity to install the 3D printer at the library at a later date but for now we need to work on making my Garage fit to use the printer and Laser cutter at my place.
    • Getting more donations of PC’s, Les gave me a Tower from his uncle who passed away recently, this will be passed on to a charity after having Linux Mint 19.2 XFCE installed as its light on memory at only 2Gb of RAM.
    • Setting up a Dell Optiplex 7010 i5 with 8Gb Ram 240Gb SSD (Mint 19.2 Mate) and a 250Gb HDD (windows 10) For my better Half. Her old Pentium Dual core was well past its sell by date having Mint 17.3 and Windows 7 on a 160Gb HDD in dual boot mode. I set up Libreoffice Writer to ribbon mode as she uses MS Office at work so is more used to that interface. Her first comment once she went on line was that she can play some of the games that stopped working on the old PC due to an outdated Flash codec. One happy Wife, Life is Good 🙂  
    • Broke my phone today 🙁
  • Josh
    • Been playing around with WSL. I did use it back in the BETA stages but it’s much improved now.
    • I’ve found a VSCode plugin that allows you to edit files in folders that are within WSL. This allows me to do EduBlocks development in Windows. 
    • It’s quite obvious that this could now replace Linux for me and I do wonder what we will see in 10 years. Will linux distros be as popular or will Windows WSL get even better and be more popular?
    • Found a new OS called “CloudReady” from Neverware that lets you turn any PC into a Chromebook. It’s super cool!
    • I returned to school this week 🙁
    • The printed magazines are live! We’ve had so many orders, considering we thought we’d get none, we’re really happy. 
    • I got a new GPU. I opted for an Asus OC Nvidia RTX 2060. It’s amazing, the drivers actually work properly *cough AMD* and so far my experience of Nvidia is great. Real Time Ray Tracing is super cool, even though it’s not really implemented in anything. 
  • Joe
    • Have been taking a break from social media 
      • I am even behind on my podcast listening.
    • Have been listening to the wheel of time again
    • Got the Galaxy Note 10 plus
      • Still think it cost way too much but the wife convinced me to get it
      • Will come up with a full review
      • Android Dex is nice, works very well and easy
      • Linux on dex is not yet available for the Note 10+
      • The screen is brilliant. 
      • Transferred a 60 gig of data over wifi to the device very easily
      • Didnt even heat up using resilio sync with 60+ gb of data
      • Usb c dock worked without a hitch as did displaylink
        • Although Dex does not work over display link
      • Also want to test steam link with android on dex
    • Fixed an m.2 adapter with a faulty usb 3.0 b connection
    • Testing anlinux on the note 10+
      • It works very smooth, no hitches or delays that i have seen
      • Using ubuntu but it feels a lot more like trying to setup arch
        • Very minimal install 
        • Installed mate
        • Installed nautilus
        • Created a new user and attempted to install vlc
        • VLC installed but still will not launch
        • Further testing required
    • One of the few issues that i have found with my migration to the new phone is that a lot of my settings in podkicker did not migrate, although all of my subscriptions did so i have ended up with a backlog of pocasts

NEWS:

SECURITY UPDATE:

  • Firefox 69 blocks trackers by default!
    • By using the standard tracking profile built into the browser, Firefox 69 will block mainly 3rd party cookies: this means ads and their trackers.
    • Cryptominers are blocked by default!
    • Autoplay videos will be blocked by default, as well, and you can control how. Nothing at all, no audio only, or allow.
    • Firefox is also blocking Flash from automatically running without your explicit permission. The “Always activate” option has been removed.
    • This is for all platforms you can run Firefox on, not just Linux! That includes Windows, Android, MacOS and iOS.
    • New logo coming in 70!

WRAP-UP:

Before we leave, we want to make sure to acknowledge some of the people who make mintCast possible …

  • Josh Lowe for all his work on the website and the livestream (We’ve had over 60 listeners today on the backup mixer platform and brought on some new listeners who’ve never heard of the podcast)
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem!>
]]> full 1:09:01 3878