NAS – mintCast https://mintcast.org The podcast by the Linux Mint community for all users of Linux Tue, 16 Jul 2024 01:41:19 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=7.1 https://mintcast.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/cropped-small-logo-32x32.png NAS – mintCast https://mintcast.org 32 32 mintCast false episodic CC-BY-SA 4.0 CC-BY-SA 4.0 podcast NAS – mintCast https://mintcast.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/big-logo-1600.png https://mintcast.org TV-G 164426984 441.5 – NASters of the Universe https://mintcast.org/441-5-nasters-of-the-universe/ Wed, 17 Jul 2024 04:00:00 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=7033 In our Innards section: It’s all about the NAS

And finally, the feedback and a couple of suggestions

]]> In our Innards section: It’s all about the NAS

And finally, the feedback and a couple of suggestions

Full Show Notes Here

Contact Info:

Special Thanks To:

  • Bill for our audio editing
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • Hobstar for our logo, initrd for the animated Discord logo
  • Londoner for our time syncs and various other contributions
  • Bill Houser for hosting the server which runs our website, website maintenance, and the NextCloud server on which we host our show notes and raw audio
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem … and co!>
]]> 441 441 NASters of the Universe full 57:21 7033 394 – With music on our side to break the old hard drives https://mintcast.org/394-with-music-on-our-side-to-break-the-old-hard-drives/ Fri, 26 Aug 2022 15:20:07 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=5598 In security and privacy, Discord and your passwords are pythoned, and hard drives apparently have a taste in music
Then in our Wanderings, Joe plays with his handheld, Bill is setting up a new server, Moss skips the assault and gets a couple batteries, and Norbert has had done some things.
Download
]]> 1:25 The News
16:15 Security and Privacy
26:03 Bi-Weekly Wanderings
1:22:59 Housekeeping and Announcements

First up in the news, The Kernel gets a bump, LibreOffice adds a point, Android 13 is out if you have a Pixel, and Gnome has a birthday,

In security and privacy, Discord and your passwords are pythoned, and hard drives apparently have a taste in music

Then in our Wanderings, Joe plays with his handheld, Bill is setting up a new server, Moss skips the assault and gets a couple batteries, and Norbert has had done some things.

Twitter. Discord. Telegram. Matrix. Reddit. Youtube.

The News

Security and Privacy Update

Announcements

Wrap-up

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

  • Norbert, Londoner, Tony H, and all others for our audio editing
  • Leo for timestamps and publishing
  • Josh Lowe for all his work on the website
  • Hobstar for our logo
  • initrd for the animated Discord logo
  • 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!
]]> 394 - With music on our side to break the old hard drives full 1:26:24 5598 mintCast 352 – Repredictability (mp3) https://mintcast.org/mintcast-352-repredictability-mp3/ Wed, 13 Jan 2021 05:03:17 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4866 Then in the news, Linux Mint 20.1 is here, the M1 gets closer, Firefox gets a facelift and Project Lenix makes more progress 
In security, what’s going on with Qt6?
Download
]]> Download

1:41 Bi-Weekly Wanderings
33:10 News
1:02:08 Security Update
1:08:04 Outro

First up, in our Wanderings, I’ve been playing with Docker, Joe got a 1up, Tony bundles up again, and Josh re-predicts

Then in the news, Linux Mint 20.1 is here, the M1 gets closer, Firefox gets a facelift and Project Lenix makes more progress 

In security, what’s going on with Qt6?

BI-WEEKLY WANDERINGS:

  • Leo
    • My focus has been at work and editing Linux User Space these past couple of weeks.
    • I am finally going to put Aaron’s Docker compose file to good use to get a long term Gitea instance now that my NAS is settled and running well.
  • Joe
    • Got the screen adapter for the Arcade1Up machine.  Still need to finish putting it together
    • 3d printed a part for listener Dustin for a pair of headphones that I had sent him.
      • Had to switch to pla for the print
      • Happy to say that it printed perfectly and seemed very sturdy using the gcode that I had used before for the same print
      • Sad to say that this means that I need to go back to tweaking the settings for PETG.  Slow it down even more and see if that gets the prints to turn out right
    • Was able to fix the Samsung Galaxy Gear S3 Frontier watch with a 15 dollar part from ebay
      • I had purchased a broken motherboard for the watch that was only supposed to have issues with the heart rate sensor and the pedometer so that I could verify that the screen was working correctly
      • The screen does work and most of the functions on the watch itself works as well
      • Thought that I got lucky and the pedometer and the heart rate monitor were correct.  I verified that the heart rate monitor was working by comparing it to my other watch and everything seemed to be fine.  I did see that the number of steps were being counted but when I compared it to my phone over the course of the day the number on the watch was lower than the phone.  This should not be the case it should be the other way around.  
      • Then i found out that the watch was showing that i was going up and down stairs all day so i ordered another one and will be getting it soon in order to do another fix
      • I am giving my other watch to my wife to see if she likes it or not.  If not, I will probably sell it.
    • Got a family portrait coming in a few months. The pictures were taken for it
      • We won a raffle for it but there was still a lot of cost involved because we wanted the larger size because it comes with a couple of extra 10 inch paintings that we can send to the rest of the family
      • Way more money than i wanted to pay but with my eldest child turning 18 I really want to get it done whilst the kids have no choice in the matter
      • But it is a rather large expense for me and I don’t want to go through that same company in order to get the frame
      • I could really use some suggestions and knowledge on framing.  If you have any knowledge on the subject please advise me on the best way to frame a museum quality painting, please email me jb@mintcast.org
  • Tony Hughes
    • Not a lot going on here as we went into another stay at home order right after New Year, so I have been baking, modeling and watching other people modeling on YouTube.
    • On a good note regarding the Virus, my wife has now had the FULL vaccination as she works in the critical care department of our local hospital in an admin role. She was lucky to get her second dose just before they changed it to be 12 weeks after the first, the day after she had her second injection. This will reduce my risk considerably given where she works.
    • On the Diecast modeling as it is winter and my paintshop is in the garage which is not heated. So I have mainly been preparing models for the paint stage so dismantling them, drilling and taping the posts ready for reassembly and paint stripping then storing for later paint and reassembly. I will also print the decals needed for those models that require them at the reassembly stage.   
    • Very quiet Linux wise although last night I installed the Mint 20.1 upgrade onto my main Laptop which we will be talking about later. 
  • Josh Hawk
    •  First to clarify my predictions.
      • 1. Linux phones will double in number and power in 2021.
        • What I mean by number is the amount of phones on the market.
        • What I mean by power is a benchmark score would be doubled.
        • Only to include phones that use an official Linux kernel.
      • 2. All mainstream cable tv channels will switch to apps.
        • I know they all have apps now but what I meant was they will all have an app that requires a monthly subscription to access. Such as Discovery+ and the likes.
        • I do not mean that cable tv will die and only have apps with subscriptions but will have cable tv broadcasts and the option to use their streaming service with a small monthly fee.
      • 3. Firefox will be given to the community.
        • I don’t think that would be a totally bad thing depending on who picked up the code base.
    •      I put a poll on the mintcast group asking what distro I should use for a year long run on my main laptop. The consensus was Arch Linux and I have been working since then to get it installed and functional on that laptop.  I have the base system installed at this point and it boots but no desktop yet because I cannot get wifi connection even though I had it on the live usb. I am working with cryptodan and londoner on the issue. Finally I got WIFi working and I got to install my desktop (Cinnamon of course). I actually had to use nmcli to finally connect to wifi instead of iwd that I was using but was not working. Once I got WiFi working it was a few simple installs and I had a desktop but I did run into one more issue. After installing the desktop and lightdm I was greeted with “Failed to load light display manager” and found out I needed what was called the  lightdm-gtk-greeter and then it would load the login screen.
    • I have been working on my HP server at my parents house. I had to replace 3 drives that must have been damaged in shipping and learn how to set up hardware RAID. I finally got openSUSE Leap 15.2 installed but the wifi card I was using to install would not work once openSUSE Leap 15.2 was installed. I have since ordered some ethernet over powerline adapters to see if that solves my internet woes. The powerline ethernet was the plan all along but I was just wanting to get the system set up at least and I had the wifi usb dongle already so I figured i’d use that till it didn’t work. 

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, 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 4866 mintCast 352 – Repredictability https://mintcast.org/mintcast-352-repredictability/ Wed, 13 Jan 2021 05:03:12 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4862 Then in the news, Linux Mint 20.1 is here, the M1 gets closer, Firefox gets a facelift and Project Lenix makes more progress 
In security, what’s going on with Qt6?
Download
]]> Download

1:41 Bi-Weekly Wanderings
33:10 News
1:02:08 Security Update
1:08:04 Outro

First up, in our Wanderings, I’ve been playing with Docker, Joe got a 1up, Tony bundles up again, and Josh re-predicts

Then in the news, Linux Mint 20.1 is here, the M1 gets closer, Firefox gets a facelift and Project Lenix makes more progress 

In security, what’s going on with Qt6?

BI-WEEKLY WANDERINGS:

  • Leo
    • My focus has been at work and editing Linux User Space these past couple of weeks.
    • I am finally going to put Aaron’s Docker compose file to good use to get a long term Gitea instance now that my NAS is settled and running well.
  • Joe
    • Got the screen adapter for the Arcade1Up machine.  Still need to finish putting it together
    • 3d printed a part for listener Dustin for a pair of headphones that I had sent him.
      • Had to switch to pla for the print
      • Happy to say that it printed perfectly and seemed very sturdy using the gcode that I had used before for the same print
      • Sad to say that this means that I need to go back to tweaking the settings for PETG.  Slow it down even more and see if that gets the prints to turn out right
    • Was able to fix the Samsung Galaxy Gear S3 Frontier watch with a 15 dollar part from ebay
      • I had purchased a broken motherboard for the watch that was only supposed to have issues with the heart rate sensor and the pedometer so that I could verify that the screen was working correctly
      • The screen does work and most of the functions on the watch itself works as well
      • Thought that I got lucky and the pedometer and the heart rate monitor were correct.  I verified that the heart rate monitor was working by comparing it to my other watch and everything seemed to be fine.  I did see that the number of steps were being counted but when I compared it to my phone over the course of the day the number on the watch was lower than the phone.  This should not be the case it should be the other way around.  
      • Then i found out that the watch was showing that i was going up and down stairs all day so i ordered another one and will be getting it soon in order to do another fix
      • I am giving my other watch to my wife to see if she likes it or not.  If not, I will probably sell it.
    • Got a family portrait coming in a few months. The pictures were taken for it
      • We won a raffle for it but there was still a lot of cost involved because we wanted the larger size because it comes with a couple of extra 10 inch paintings that we can send to the rest of the family
      • Way more money than i wanted to pay but with my eldest child turning 18 I really want to get it done whilst the kids have no choice in the matter
      • But it is a rather large expense for me and I don’t want to go through that same company in order to get the frame
      • I could really use some suggestions and knowledge on framing.  If you have any knowledge on the subject please advise me on the best way to frame a museum quality painting, please email me jb@mintcast.org
  • Tony Hughes
    • Not a lot going on here as we went into another stay at home order right after New Year, so I have been baking, modeling and watching other people modeling on YouTube.
    • On a good note regarding the Virus, my wife has now had the FULL vaccination as she works in the critical care department of our local hospital in an admin role. She was lucky to get her second dose just before they changed it to be 12 weeks after the first, the day after she had her second injection. This will reduce my risk considerably given where she works.
    • On the Diecast modeling as it is winter and my paintshop is in the garage which is not heated. So I have mainly been preparing models for the paint stage so dismantling them, drilling and taping the posts ready for reassembly and paint stripping then storing for later paint and reassembly. I will also print the decals needed for those models that require them at the reassembly stage.   
    • Very quiet Linux wise although last night I installed the Mint 20.1 upgrade onto my main Laptop which we will be talking about later. 
  • Josh Hawk
    •  First to clarify my predictions.
      • 1. Linux phones will double in number and power in 2021.
        • What I mean by number is the amount of phones on the market.
        • What I mean by power is a benchmark score would be doubled.
        • Only to include phones that use an official Linux kernel.
      • 2. All mainstream cable tv channels will switch to apps.
        • I know they all have apps now but what I meant was they will all have an app that requires a monthly subscription to access. Such as Discovery+ and the likes.
        • I do not mean that cable tv will die and only have apps with subscriptions but will have cable tv broadcasts and the option to use their streaming service with a small monthly fee.
      • 3. Firefox will be given to the community.
        • I don’t think that would be a totally bad thing depending on who picked up the code base.
    •      I put a poll on the mintcast group asking what distro I should use for a year long run on my main laptop. The consensus was Arch Linux and I have been working since then to get it installed and functional on that laptop.  I have the base system installed at this point and it boots but no desktop yet because I cannot get wifi connection even though I had it on the live usb. I am working with cryptodan and londoner on the issue. Finally I got WIFi working and I got to install my desktop (Cinnamon of course). I actually had to use nmcli to finally connect to wifi instead of iwd that I was using but was not working. Once I got WiFi working it was a few simple installs and I had a desktop but I did run into one more issue. After installing the desktop and lightdm I was greeted with “Failed to load light display manager” and found out I needed what was called the  lightdm-gtk-greeter and then it would load the login screen.
    • I have been working on my HP server at my parents house. I had to replace 3 drives that must have been damaged in shipping and learn how to set up hardware RAID. I finally got openSUSE Leap 15.2 installed but the wifi card I was using to install would not work once openSUSE Leap 15.2 was installed. I have since ordered some ethernet over powerline adapters to see if that solves my internet woes. The powerline ethernet was the plan all along but I was just wanting to get the system set up at least and I had the wifi usb dongle already so I figured i’d use that till it didn’t work. 

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, 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 4862 mintCast 351 – Greasy Joysticks (mp3) https://mintcast.org/mintcast-351-greasy-joysticks-mp3/ Wed, 30 Dec 2020 06:02:28 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4840 Then in the news, Mint’s 20.1 Beta is available, Kentucky Fried Chicken reduces, reuses and recycles, XFCE sees an upgrade, and Gnome not far behind.
In security, Solarwinds...
Download
]]> Download

0:27 HPR Spot
1:22 Show Start
2:46 Bi-Weekly Wanderings
42:01 News
1:06:10 Security Update
1:16:09 Outro

First up, in our Wanderings, I nuke an SSD on accident, Joe gets buff…er, Tony fills a doggy bag, Moss is grateful, and Erik Linuxes all the things!

Then in the news, Mint’s 20.1 Beta is available, Kentucky Fried Chicken reduces, reuses and recycles, XFCE sees an upgrade, and Gnome not far behind.

In security, Solarwinds…

BI-WEEKLY WANDERINGS:

  • Leo
    • As promised, rebuilt my NAS during the holiday downtime
    • Traded the Pi 4 for the NAS for Nextcloud.
    • Nextcloud storage lives in BTRFS now!
    • Neal Gompa, of Fedora and openSUSE fame, advises a move to the HWE kernel for better btrfs support.
    • My ESXi server bit the dust… sort of.
      • I was convinced an SSD had died, but it was the OS flash drive
      • Nuked the SSD for testing and realized it was fine…
  • Joe
    • Enjoying time off with the kids. Still haven’t killed any of them yet so things must be going ok.
    • My doctor told me my cholesterol was high again so I need to come off the diet that I am on and try something else.  Going to try out calorie restriction and see if coach Greg knows what he is talking about.  High volume, low calorie dense foods, while maintaining a low caloric intake.  He has a new cookbook but I am not paying those prices for it.
    • At this point the PSP’s have paid for themselves including all the replacement parts.  Thanks listener Dustin I hope it is treating you well.
    • I was able to pick up a broken Samsung Gear S3 at a decent price and tried to get it to work.  I was able to get the battery to charge but I was not able to get it to turn on.  I was able to find a temporary replacement motherboard for it on eBay for 15 dollars without the pedometer or the heart rate monitor which will allow me to test the functionality of the screen and make sure that the problem is the motherboard and not the screen.  Either way I used the profit from the PSP’s to get and I have had fun trying out different things to get it working.  I will be keeping my eyes open on ebay for others that look promising.  I have plenty of replacement parts at this point if I can find one that has just a dead battery or a broken back screen.  But I want to get the test board first so that I can make sure I know what the issues are. I should mention that the item was water damaged and I went through the normal process to try and fix that (IPA and a toothbrush).
    • Lots of exercise while on vacation.  Have done a lot of bike riding and weight lifting.
    • Someone got me an Arcade 1Up machine.  The Space Invaders version.  Which is really cool.  It is an expensive gift to have come from someone not family.  Probably one of the cooler gifts that I have ever gotten.  Definitely going to be modding it after a whole lot of research. 
      • I have already built several USB encoders in the past so that will not be much of an issue.  I will probably use a 3B+ or the batocera ThinkPad so that I can easily hook up a keyboard for quick fixes and setup.  May drill a hole in the side for external USB ports.
      • I will order the display adapter and I have not decided how the control setup will be yet because I do want to be able to play the most amount of games on it that I can including fighting games.  Might be hard for games that require shoulder buttons but not impossible. 
      • I will also have a temporary setup that allows the use of a controller and that could also cover for any games that I cannot get the arcade setup for.
      • I am going to see if I can get some boards and some drill bits and make multiple arcade setups.  Well I would like to, it depends on the cost and the time involved.  But the atmegas for the USB encoders are not hard to make and not expensive, the various arcade buttons can be if I go for good ones.
      • But first I am going to put it together stock and play with it like that
  • Tony Hughes
    • Enjoying Christmas as much as possible with the restrictions here in the UK we had one guest for Lunch on Christmas day which I cooked. After he went home we went for a Christmas day walk and popped in on a relative of my wife who lives 10 minutes walk away. We were in time to say Hi to some of her cousins and her aunt on a Zoom call, we only stayed 5 minutes or so but it was nice to connect with family on the holiday.
    • For the last week it was mainly planning and preparing for Christmas Day baking traditional mince pies, shopping for and preparing everything for the Christmas meal. I like to prepare all the vegetables ready for cooking the day before saves work on the day and I can relax a little. I also cooked the chicken the night before to give me oven space on the day. Only 2 meat eaters so not a massive bird but plenty for leftovers and our friend to take a doggy bag home for his leftover meal.
  • Moss
    • I received some Yule money from Firecat which allowed me to get the computer desk, UPS and monitor I needed to finish setting up my studio space. I need to get a drill bit so I can mount my mic boom and then I’ll be done. 
    • I got a new sponsor on Sponsus! My second…
    • I’ve been hunting for that next great distro to review. I installed Ultimate Edition, which looked really great — like a major media company wanted to make Ubuntu look flashy — but it didn’t write GRUB anywhere it can find. I tried Mageia 8 Beta2, but couldn’t find how to use or install dnfdragora, which is listed as the second choice in package management (it would be my first choice). I tried to install Slax and SolydK, but they refused to install on a UEFI system. So I installed Lubuntu 20.10. I don’t think we’ve reviewed anything with an LX-type desktop yet. I’ve had no issues, and LXQt looks like it has come of age at last.
    • Just prior to yesterday’s team meeting, I decided to reinstall Mint 20 on my desktop and restore it from my latest Timeshift backup. Nope. I then spent several hours trying different things, and the ultimate solution was to nuke the SSD and start over. I installed Linux Mint 20 MATE on it, and was going to leave it there but I just couldn’t, so I split the SSD in half (partitioned, people, I’m not a lunatic), and split the second half ⅔-⅓. I put OpenMandriva Lx 4.1 on the larger partition and Bodhi 5.1 on the smaller. I have those two mostly set up, and as of right now I’m 100% (I think) on the Mint partition being back up to snuff.
    • I’ve had a few promises of articles for It’s Moss dot com, but nothing has yet been submitted. mintCast listeners, this is for you, please submit stuff. I’ve kept up with a couple of blog posts of my own, usually echoed to my blog at LinuxQuestions.org. 
    • Mom is still in the rehab home, and has to pay for her room now as she ran out of days covered by Medicare. But there are other family issues: My uncle and aunt moved from their home in Yakima WA to a senior center in Utah, but my aunt was seriously injured on the trip, had to spend some hospital and rehab time before moving on to Utah, but died shortly after arriving. During this, my uncle went to the hospital with Covid, but he’s back at the center and doing ok (he was back home with his wife before she passed).
    • We have been running out of shows to watch, so we went scanning for old ones we missed. I don’t know how we missed Haven, but it’s on the list now, and we also found Locke & Key (sort of the same thing as Stranger Things but based on a comic) and, to keep things light, Mr. Iglesias, a Welcome-Back-Kotter remake using comedian Gabriel Iglesias and a mostly minority cast taking place in his native Long Beach (which is also where my grandmother lived, so I know some of the places).
    • Dresden-wise, we have started Book 9, White Night.
  • Erik Lietz
    • Office on Mint 20 – since the last episode I was part of, we have completed our transition to Mint 20 on all of our production machines. Transition went well and other than our Windows VM – very stable. 
    • Microsoft Office in a Windows VM – I forgot how long it takes to install Microsoft software. 
    • Switching away from AutoCAD – looking at BricsCAD, which is a Linux native CAD program that may replace AutoCAD for 2D drawing work and most of our 3D design work. 
    • Nextcloud on Intel NUC. For the office, we bought a pre-configured Nextcloud setups on an Intel NUC. I love the NUC form factor. This system has a customized version of Arch Linux tuned to run Nextcloud. Now I just need to wrap my head around using Nextcloud. 
    • Intel NUC as automated off-site backup. Seeing the form factor of the Intel NUC (and really liking them) we got 2 of the NUC’s to set up as off-site daily backup machines. I haven’t gotten into these yet but the idea is to use a minimal installation of Ubuntu Server or Debian using Rsync as the transfer system. 
    • https://www.howtogeek.com/116032/how-to-encrypt-your-home-folder-after-installing-ubuntu/ 
    • https://www.techrepublic.com/article/how-to-use-7zip-to-encrypt-files/ 
    • Raspberry Pis for kids workstations. My wife and I are setting up individual computer stations for the kids using Raspberry Pi 4Bs with 4 GB. I’m hoping they will be desktop replacements. Not sure yet if I will use the Raspberry OS or Ubuntu MATE. 
    • PinePhone! I got my PinePhone last week. It’s the Manjaro edition phone with their FOSH operating system. The build quality on the phone is very good, especially for the price. The Manjaro operating system is a little buggy. I haven’t gotten a phone call to go through yet. Some apps like Telegram work just fine. It does have a fully functioning terminal. After some checking online, I think I am going to get an SD card for it and then try a couple of different operating systems. From what I can tell either Sailfish OS or Ubuntu Touch are the two OS’s that are the most polished right now. (Moss: /e/ and Lineage OS are better than Ubuntu Touch, about the same level of polish as Sailfish, and Sailfish doesn’t sell to the US.)

THE NEWS: 

SECURITY UPDATE:

  • The SolarWinds Hack
    • As far as we know malicious updates were released in new versions of Orion, SolarWinds’ network outage monitoring utility, back in March.
    • FireEye discovered this month because they were on the list of hacked companies, which is how they caught on initially.
    • A big downside is that FireEye makes red team tools. Essentially reconnaissance and hacking tools for penetration testers. Now that code is in the hands of malicious actors.
    • Turns out, over 18,000 of 33,000 customers were using Orion in their networks including, seemingly, every department in the US government that has IT staff, Cisco, Intel, Microsoft, and hospitals, just to name a few. More infections noted in every continent but Oceania and Antarctica.
    • We don’t know much about other companies, even the named ones, since this is a damaging issue.
    • Solarwinds has been noted as using a password “solarwinds123” and asking customers to disable antivirus on machines using Orion.
    • …Screaming scientists at the beginning of a catastrophe film.
    • SUSE not affected by SolarWinds Orion vulnerability

Conspiracy Time: The CEO of Solarwinds, Kevin Thompson, signaled he would be moving to another position at the end of the year. It happened, and a successor appointed, a day before the FireEye announcement.

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, 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 4840 mintCast 351 – Greasy Joysticks https://mintcast.org/mintcast-351-greasy-joysticks/ Wed, 30 Dec 2020 06:02:27 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4836 Then in the news, Mint’s 20.1 Beta is available, Kentucky Fried Chicken recycles, XFCE sees an upgrade, and Gnome not far behind.
In security, Solarwinds...
Download
]]> Download

0:16 HPR Spot
1:26 Show Start
2:44 Linux Innards
50:34 Vibrations from the Ether
1:04:09 Check This Out
1:07:14 Outro

First up, in our Wanderings, I nuke an SSD on accident, Joe gets buff…er, Tony fills a doggy bag, Moss is grateful, and Erik Linuxes all the things!

Then in the news, Mint’s 20.1 Beta is available, Kentucky Fried Chicken reduces, reuses and recycles, XFCE sees an upgrade, and Gnome not far behind.

In security, Solarwinds…

BI-WEEKLY WANDERINGS:

  • Leo
    • As promised, rebuilt my NAS during the holiday downtime
    • Traded the Pi 4 for the NAS for Nextcloud.
    • Nextcloud storage lives in BTRFS now!
    • Neal Gompa, of Fedora and openSUSE fame, advises a move to the HWE kernel for better btrfs support.
    • My ESXi server bit the dust… sort of.
      • I was convinced an SSD had died, but it was the OS flash drive
      • Nuked the SSD for testing and realized it was fine…
  • Joe
    • Enjoying time off with the kids. Still haven’t killed any of them yet so things must be going ok.
    • My doctor told me my cholesterol was high again so I need to come off the diet that I am on and try something else.  Going to try out calorie restriction and see if coach Greg knows what he is talking about.  High volume, low calorie dense foods, while maintaining a low caloric intake.  He has a new cookbook but I am not paying those prices for it.
    • At this point the PSP’s have paid for themselves including all the replacement parts.  Thanks listener Dustin I hope it is treating you well.
    • I was able to pick up a broken Samsung Gear S3 at a decent price and tried to get it to work.  I was able to get the battery to charge but I was not able to get it to turn on.  I was able to find a temporary replacement motherboard for it on eBay for 15 dollars without the pedometer or the heart rate monitor which will allow me to test the functionality of the screen and make sure that the problem is the motherboard and not the screen.  Either way I used the profit from the PSP’s to get and I have had fun trying out different things to get it working.  I will be keeping my eyes open on ebay for others that look promising.  I have plenty of replacement parts at this point if I can find one that has just a dead battery or a broken back screen.  But I want to get the test board first so that I can make sure I know what the issues are. I should mention that the item was water damaged and I went through the normal process to try and fix that (IPA and a toothbrush).
    • Lots of exercise while on vacation.  Have done a lot of bike riding and weight lifting.
    • Someone got me an Arcade 1Up machine.  The Space Invaders version.  Which is really cool.  It is an expensive gift to have come from someone not family.  Probably one of the cooler gifts that I have ever gotten.  Definitely going to be modding it after a whole lot of research. 
      • I have already built several USB encoders in the past so that will not be much of an issue.  I will probably use a 3B+ or the batocera ThinkPad so that I can easily hook up a keyboard for quick fixes and setup.  May drill a hole in the side for external USB ports.
      • I will order the display adapter and I have not decided how the control setup will be yet because I do want to be able to play the most amount of games on it that I can including fighting games.  Might be hard for games that require shoulder buttons but not impossible. 
      • I will also have a temporary setup that allows the use of a controller and that could also cover for any games that I cannot get the arcade setup for.
      • I am going to see if I can get some boards and some drill bits and make multiple arcade setups.  Well I would like to, it depends on the cost and the time involved.  But the atmegas for the USB encoders are not hard to make and not expensive, the various arcade buttons can be if I go for good ones.
      • But first I am going to put it together stock and play with it like that
  • Tony Hughes
    • Enjoying Christmas as much as possible with the restrictions here in the UK we had one guest for Lunch on Christmas day which I cooked. After he went home we went for a Christmas day walk and popped in on a relative of my wife who lives 10 minutes walk away. We were in time to say Hi to some of her cousins and her aunt on a Zoom call, we only stayed 5 minutes or so but it was nice to connect with family on the holiday.
    • For the last week it was mainly planning and preparing for Christmas Day baking traditional mince pies, shopping for and preparing everything for the Christmas meal. I like to prepare all the vegetables ready for cooking the day before saves work on the day and I can relax a little. I also cooked the chicken the night before to give me oven space on the day. Only 2 meat eaters so not a massive bird but plenty for leftovers and our friend to take a doggy bag home for his leftover meal.
  • Moss
    • I received some Yule money from Firecat which allowed me to get the computer desk, UPS and monitor I needed to finish setting up my studio space. I need to get a drill bit so I can mount my mic boom and then I’ll be done. 
    • I got a new sponsor on Sponsus! My second…
    • I’ve been hunting for that next great distro to review. I installed Ultimate Edition, which looked really great — like a major media company wanted to make Ubuntu look flashy — but it didn’t write GRUB anywhere it can find. I tried Mageia 8 Beta2, but couldn’t find how to use or install dnfdragora, which is listed as the second choice in package management (it would be my first choice). I tried to install Slax and SolydK, but they refused to install on a UEFI system. So I installed Lubuntu 20.10. I don’t think we’ve reviewed anything with an LX-type desktop yet. I’ve had no issues, and LXQt looks like it has come of age at last.
    • Just prior to yesterday’s team meeting, I decided to reinstall Mint 20 on my desktop and restore it from my latest Timeshift backup. Nope. I then spent several hours trying different things, and the ultimate solution was to nuke the SSD and start over. I installed Linux Mint 20 MATE on it, and was going to leave it there but I just couldn’t, so I split the SSD in half (partitioned, people, I’m not a lunatic), and split the second half ⅔-⅓. I put OpenMandriva Lx 4.1 on the larger partition and Bodhi 5.1 on the smaller. I have those two mostly set up, and as of right now I’m 100% (I think) on the Mint partition being back up to snuff.
    • I’ve had a few promises of articles for It’s Moss dot com, but nothing has yet been submitted. mintCast listeners, this is for you, please submit stuff. I’ve kept up with a couple of blog posts of my own, usually echoed to my blog at LinuxQuestions.org. 
    • Mom is still in the rehab home, and has to pay for her room now as she ran out of days covered by Medicare. But there are other family issues: My uncle and aunt moved from their home in Yakima WA to a senior center in Utah, but my aunt was seriously injured on the trip, had to spend some hospital and rehab time before moving on to Utah, but died shortly after arriving. During this, my uncle went to the hospital with Covid, but he’s back at the center and doing ok (he was back home with his wife before she passed).
    • We have been running out of shows to watch, so we went scanning for old ones we missed. I don’t know how we missed Haven, but it’s on the list now, and we also found Locke & Key (sort of the same thing as Stranger Things but based on a comic) and, to keep things light, Mr. Iglesias, a Welcome-Back-Kotter remake using comedian Gabriel Iglesias and a mostly minority cast taking place in his native Long Beach (which is also where my grandmother lived, so I know some of the places).
    • Dresden-wise, we have started Book 9, White Night.
  • Erik Lietz
    • Office on Mint 20 – since the last episode I was part of, we have completed our transition to Mint 20 on all of our production machines. Transition went well and other than our Windows VM – very stable. 
    • Microsoft Office in a Windows VM – I forgot how long it takes to install Microsoft software. 
    • Switching away from AutoCAD – looking at BricsCAD, which is a Linux native CAD program that may replace AutoCAD for 2D drawing work and most of our 3D design work. 
    • Nextcloud on Intel NUC. For the office, we bought a pre-configured Nextcloud setups on an Intel NUC. I love the NUC form factor. This system has a customized version of Arch Linux tuned to run Nextcloud. Now I just need to wrap my head around using Nextcloud. 
    • Intel NUC as automated off-site backup. Seeing the form factor of the Intel NUC (and really liking them) we got 2 of the NUC’s to set up as off-site daily backup machines. I haven’t gotten into these yet but the idea is to use a minimal installation of Ubuntu Server or Debian using Rsync as the transfer system. 
    • https://www.howtogeek.com/116032/how-to-encrypt-your-home-folder-after-installing-ubuntu/ 
    • https://www.techrepublic.com/article/how-to-use-7zip-to-encrypt-files/ 
    • Raspberry Pis for kids workstations. My wife and I are setting up individual computer stations for the kids using Raspberry Pi 4Bs with 4 GB. I’m hoping they will be desktop replacements. Not sure yet if I will use the Raspberry OS or Ubuntu MATE. 
    • PinePhone! I got my PinePhone last week. It’s the Manjaro edition phone with their FOSH operating system. The build quality on the phone is very good, especially for the price. The Manjaro operating system is a little buggy. I haven’t gotten a phone call to go through yet. Some apps like Telegram work just fine. It does have a fully functioning terminal. After some checking online, I think I am going to get an SD card for it and then try a couple of different operating systems. From what I can tell either Sailfish OS or Ubuntu Touch are the two OS’s that are the most polished right now. (Moss: /e/ and Lineage OS are better than Ubuntu Touch, about the same level of polish as Sailfish, and Sailfish doesn’t sell to the US.)

THE NEWS: 

SECURITY UPDATE:

  • The SolarWinds Hack
    • As far as we know malicious updates were released in new versions of Orion, SolarWinds’ network outage monitoring utility, back in March.
    • FireEye discovered this month because they were on the list of hacked companies, which is how they caught on initially.
    • A big downside is that FireEye makes red team tools. Essentially reconnaissance and hacking tools for penetration testers. Now that code is in the hands of malicious actors.
    • Turns out, over 18,000 of 33,000 customers were using Orion in their networks including, seemingly, every department in the US government that has IT staff, Cisco, Intel, Microsoft, and hospitals, just to name a few. More infections noted in every continent but Oceania and Antarctica.
    • We don’t know much about other companies, even the named ones, since this is a damaging issue.
    • Solarwinds has been noted as using a password “solarwinds123” and asking customers to disable antivirus on machines using Orion.
    • …Screaming scientists at the beginning of a catastrophe film.
    • SUSE not affected by SolarWinds Orion vulnerability

Conspiracy Time: The CEO of Solarwinds, Kevin Thompson, signaled he would be moving to another position at the end of the year. It happened, and a successor appointed, a day before the FireEye announcement.

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, 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 4836 mintCast 339.5 – ZFS Butter Recognize (mp3) https://mintcast.org/mintcast-339-5-zfs-butter-recognize-mp3/ Wed, 22 Jul 2020 04:46:11 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4540 And finally, some feedback and a few suggestions
Download
]]>

Download

1:58 Innards
44:04 Feedback
1:16:41 Check This Out
1:20:58 Outro

In our Innards section, community member Joshua Hawk tries to convert us to unsalted BTRFS.

And finally, some feedback and a few suggestions

LINUX INNARDS: 

Joshua Hawk

When did you first learn about Linux?

When did you start using it as much as you do?

Btrfs – No Partitions Needed, with Joshua Hawk 

  • Features
    1. Copy on Write (CoW)
      1. Creates new files when storing data instead of overwriting current data.
      2. Necessary for snapshots
    2. Subvolumes
      1. Like a partition but has access to the entire space of the btrfs formatted disk.
      2. Also necessary for snapshots
      3. Can be interacted with either like a directory on a filesystem or like a separately mounted filesystem.
      4. Some subvolume commands
        1.  subvolume create [destination] <name of subvolume>
        2. subvolume delete [option] <subvolume name> [<subvolume inside subvolume>] 
        3. subvolume list [options] [–sort=rootid,gen,ogen,path] <path>
    3. Snapshots
      1. NOT BACKUPS! They are akin to Windows system restore points but far far superior. 
      2. Can be automated using snapper or timeshift.
      3. Is a subvolume itself that points to data and metadata in its parent subvolume.
      4. NOT BACKUPS! 
    4. File System Compression (ZLIB, LZO, ZSTD)
      1. Saves space sometimes up to 20%-30%
      2. Increases life of SSD’s due to significantly less writes
      3. ZSTD is flexible and configurable to your needs.
      4. Mounting a subvolume with the compression option won’t compress files currently on subvolume.
      5. To compress files already contained in a subvolume you must use the Defrag command with the -r option
    5. Checksumming
      1. Not Enabled on SSD’s by default due to the fact that ssd’s tend to just fail rather than die slowly. If you want this feature with ssd’s it is recommended to use 2 ssd’s in a RAID 1 Configuration.
      2. Enabled by default on HDD’s and when used with RAID 1 will checksum and self heal files that are corrupt. 
    6. SSD Awareness
      1. Disables file duplication to reduce writes
      2. TRIM/Discard to report free blocks for reuse
      3. Sends writes in clusters resulting in larger write operations and faster throughput. 
    7. Send/Receive of subvolume changes
      1. Can send and receive subvolumes and changes to those subvolumes over the network for backup operations.
    8. RAID Support
      1. RAID 0, 1, 5, 6, 10 support
      2. RAID 5 and 6 are experimental and are NOT recommended!
      3. RAID 0, 1, and 10 are production ready
      4. Can add and remove storage to RAID on the fly
  1. When to use btrfs
    1. Root Filesystem
    2. Redundant data storage (NAS)
    3. Laptops with SSDs
    4. Btrfs works for MOST filesystem cases
  1. When not to use btrfs
    1. Anything that does not need redundant data storage (video game data storage for example excluding game save data)
    2. Databases due to the slow nature of CoW.
  1. Issues with btrfs
    1. Will not mount a filesystem if errors are detected on disk. This can be corrected by using the scrub command 99% of the time.
    2. If connection is lost or computer/server loses power during some btrfs operations, may result in data corruption or file system issues.
    3. If snapshots are not being controlled by a script or a limit is not set the disk drive may fill up and cause issues. Can be corrected by deleting some snapshots.
    4. As stated before RAID 5/6  is experimental and has major issues. 
  1. Main Contributors to btrfs
    1. Facebook – Where Chris Mason the lead dev on btrfs is employed
    2. SUSE Linux Enterprise (SLE)
    3. Fujitsu
    4. Oracle
  1. Links to Good btrfs Content
    1. https://btrfs.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Main_Page
    2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Btrfs
    3. btrfs: The Best Filesystem You’ve Never Heard Of – YouTube
    4. openSUSE Conference 2018 – btrfs is awesome, except when it isn’t – YouTube
    5. btrfs Tutorial | btrfs Filesystem | btrfs Subvolume and btrfs Snapshots – YouTube
    6. BTRFS Guide – Basic Commands, Snapshots, and RAID – Chris Titus Tech

VIBRATIONS FROM THE ETHER

  • Brad Alexander 
  • Brad’s addendum
  • Joe’s response
  • Henrik
  • Benjamin Moser
  • Jim Daldry
  • Bill Dietrich
  • John Wallis Saga Episode x+1

CHECK THIS OUT! 

Not Linux related at all, just a great poem about the current situation and how it may just be a positive thing. It is released under a Creative commons licence and called ‘What Happened when we all stopped’ by Tom & Bee Rivett-Carnac, very thought provoking.

Announcements:

The next show will be Sunday, the 26th of July at 7PM UTC, 2PM US Central Time, 8PM British Summer Time

Wrap-up:

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

  • Hobstar for his work on the new logo
  • Josh for all his work on the website
  • Hacker Public Radio for the Mumble server we are using to record
  • 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.
]]> full 4540 mintCast 339.5 – ZFS Butter Recognize https://mintcast.org/mintcast-339-5-zfs-butter-recognize/ Wed, 22 Jul 2020 04:20:44 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4534 And finally, some feedback and a few suggestions
Download
]]>

Download

1:58 Innards
44:04 Feedback
1:16:41 Check This Out
1:20:58 Outro

In our Innards section, community member Joshua Hawk tries to convert us to unsalted BTRFS.

And finally, some feedback and a few suggestions

LINUX INNARDS: 

Joshua Hawk

When did you first learn about Linux?

When did you start using it as much as you do?

Btrfs – No Partitions Needed, with Joshua Hawk 

  • Features
    1. Copy on Write (CoW)
      1. Creates new files when storing data instead of overwriting current data.
      2. Necessary for snapshots
    2. Subvolumes
      1. Like a partition but has access to the entire space of the btrfs formatted disk.
      2. Also necessary for snapshots
      3. Can be interacted with either like a directory on a filesystem or like a separately mounted filesystem.
      4. Some subvolume commands
        1.  subvolume create [destination] <name of subvolume>
        2. subvolume delete [option] <subvolume name> [<subvolume inside subvolume>] 
        3. subvolume list [options] [–sort=rootid,gen,ogen,path] <path>
    3. Snapshots
      1. NOT BACKUPS! They are akin to Windows system restore points but far far superior. 
      2. Can be automated using snapper or timeshift.
      3. Is a subvolume itself that points to data and metadata in its parent subvolume.
      4. NOT BACKUPS! 
    4. File System Compression (ZLIB, LZO, ZSTD)
      1. Saves space sometimes up to 20%-30%
      2. Increases life of SSD’s due to significantly less writes
      3. ZSTD is flexible and configurable to your needs.
      4. Mounting a subvolume with the compression option won’t compress files currently on subvolume.
      5. To compress files already contained in a subvolume you must use the Defrag command with the -r option
    5. Checksumming
      1. Not Enabled on SSD’s by default due to the fact that ssd’s tend to just fail rather than die slowly. If you want this feature with ssd’s it is recommended to use 2 ssd’s in a RAID 1 Configuration.
      2. Enabled by default on HDD’s and when used with RAID 1 will checksum and self heal files that are corrupt. 
    6. SSD Awareness
      1. Disables file duplication to reduce writes
      2. TRIM/Discard to report free blocks for reuse
      3. Sends writes in clusters resulting in larger write operations and faster throughput. 
    7. Send/Receive of subvolume changes
      1. Can send and receive subvolumes and changes to those subvolumes over the network for backup operations.
    8. RAID Support
      1. RAID 0, 1, 5, 6, 10 support
      2. RAID 5 and 6 are experimental and are NOT recommended!
      3. RAID 0, 1, and 10 are production ready
      4. Can add and remove storage to RAID on the fly
  1. When to use btrfs
    1. Root Filesystem
    2. Redundant data storage (NAS)
    3. Laptops with SSDs
    4. Btrfs works for MOST filesystem cases
  1. When not to use btrfs
    1. Anything that does not need redundant data storage (video game data storage for example excluding game save data)
    2. Databases due to the slow nature of CoW.
  1. Issues with btrfs
    1. Will not mount a filesystem if errors are detected on disk. This can be corrected by using the scrub command 99% of the time.
    2. If connection is lost or computer/server loses power during some btrfs operations, may result in data corruption or file system issues.
    3. If snapshots are not being controlled by a script or a limit is not set the disk drive may fill up and cause issues. Can be corrected by deleting some snapshots.
    4. As stated before RAID 5/6  is experimental and has major issues. 
  1. Main Contributors to btrfs
    1. Facebook – Where Chris Mason the lead dev on btrfs is employed
    2. SUSE Linux Enterprise (SLE)
    3. Fujitsu
    4. Oracle
  1. Links to Good btrfs Content
    1. https://btrfs.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Main_Page
    2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Btrfs
    3. btrfs: The Best Filesystem You’ve Never Heard Of – YouTube
    4. openSUSE Conference 2018 – btrfs is awesome, except when it isn’t – YouTube
    5. btrfs Tutorial | btrfs Filesystem | btrfs Subvolume and btrfs Snapshots – YouTube
    6. BTRFS Guide – Basic Commands, Snapshots, and RAID – Chris Titus Tech

VIBRATIONS FROM THE ETHER

  • Brad Alexander 
  • Brad’s addendum
  • Joe’s response
  • Henrik
  • Benjamin Moser
  • Jim Daldry
  • Bill Dietrich
  • John Wallis Saga Episode x+1

CHECK THIS OUT! 

Not Linux related at all, just a great poem about the current situation and how it may just be a positive thing. It is released under a Creative commons licence and called ‘What Happened when we all stopped’ by Tom & Bee Rivett-Carnac, very thought provoking.

Announcements:

The next show will be Sunday, the 26th of July at 7PM UTC, 2PM US Central Time, 8PM British Summer Time

Wrap-up:

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

  • Hobstar for his work on the new logo
  • Josh for all his work on the website
  • Hacker Public Radio for the Mumble server we are using to record
  • 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.
]]> full 4534