- Roundtable - muug.ca

Winkler Linux User Group
by John Funk 21 Feb '17

21 Feb '17

As was decided at the inaugural meeting, the Winkler Linux user group will be meeting on the 3rd Tuesday of each month so that we won't conflict with the MUUG meetings. This week we'll be looking at installing a storage solution for a small office/church. Meeting time: 7:15 Place: South Central Regional Library, Winkler Branch.

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Fwd: Open Source in Brazil - Growing Despite Barriers
by Gilbert E. Detillieux 14 Feb '17

14 Feb '17

FYI, in case this is of interest to any of you... Gilbert -------- Forwarded Message -------- Subject: Open Source in Brazil - Growing Despite Barriers Date: Tue, 14 Feb 2017 11:15:09 -0800 From: Rachel Roumeliotis, O'Reilly Media <oreilly(a)post.oreilly.com> O'Reilly Media Explore the country's open source community <http://post.oreilly.com/rd/9z1zfr23lhcbs293iv4lpun5gfsri47sb3pirp58jm8> Battered by a host of problems in recent years, Brazil still remains the most vibrant Latin American economy. With its strong extractive, manufacturing, and service industries, IT in Brazil is booming. Tech startups are springing to life and organizations everywhere are seeking to digitally transform their operations. And in spite of many obstacles, the use of free and open source software continues to proliferate. Open source advocates have turned to grassroots means of promoting open source software—rather than relying on government support—while hackers are creating meetups and other spaces for collaboration and training. As a result, open source is everywhere: business, education, and industry. We invite you to have a free copy of Andy Oram's 28-page report on /Open Source in Brazil/ <http://post.oreilly.com/rd/9z1znq11mcjmtf0tdpo1ktism38rucaiteis11l7gsg>. You'll see how the adoption of open source software continues to spread to businesses, education, and more, under even the most challenging situations. Get your free ebook → <http://post.oreilly.com/rd/9z1zj2epgd5edgh7rc8puot7npmmk9ncvglh1teri4g> Cheers! Rachel Roumeliotis Strategic Content Director, Programming P.S. Learn more about open source collaboration and community at the O'Reilly Open Source Convention <http://post.oreilly.com/rd/9z1zpr7oejbjcpanllfhka1u5csnt7637malgvs51p0> (OSCON) happening May 8–11, 2017 in Austin, TX. Learn useful skills, languages, and best practices and see how open source technologies fuel today's software and business systems. ... Did someone forward this to you? *Sign up here* <http://post.oreilly.com/rd/9z1zc82mv50fnep7tqbiq62auk70fvuso2pfhip4p2o>. To ensure delivery to your inbox (not bulk or junk folders), please add *oreilly(a)post.oreilly.com* <mailto:oreilly@post.oreilly.com> to your address book. O'Reilly Media, Inc. 1005 Gravenstein Highway North, Sebastopol, CA 95472 (707) 827-7000 -- Manitoba UNIX User Group E-mail: <gedetil(a)muug.ca> c/o Gilbert E. Detillieux Web: http://muug.ca/ University of Manitoba Phone: (204)474-8161 Winnipeg MB CANADA R3T 2N2 Fax: (204)474-7609

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MUUG Meeting, Feb 21, 7:30pm (date change) -- Room 1L11, Lockhart Hall
by Gilbert E. Detillieux 07 Feb '17

07 Feb '17

*** Please note the updated meeting date and location below *** The Manitoba UNIX User Group (MUUG) will be holding its next monthly meeting on Tuesday, February 21 (note date change). The meeting topic for this month is as follows: Daemon-Dash: vsftpd Wyatt Zacharias will present VSFTPD - the very secure FTP daemon. VSFTPD supports FTP and FTPS protocols, and boasts being one of the fastest and most secure FTP daemons available. Wyatt will demo running the daemon with both anonymous and authenticated modes, chroots, whitelists, and more. RTFM: Fixing drive sector SMART errors Ruh roh! Device: /dev/sdb [SAT], 5 Offline uncorrectable sectors. 7 Currently unreadable (pending) sectors. Those just flashed across your console. Is your hard drive dying? Panic time? Not so fast: Trevor Cordes will show you how to gracefully repair such errors, allowing you to delay or obviate RMAs or replacement drive purchases. The group usually holds its meetings at 7:30pm on the second Tuesday of every month from September to June. (There are no meetings in July and August.) Meetings are open to the general public; you don't have to be a MUUG member to attend. ****************************************************************** Please note our *NEW* meeting location for this month: *Room 1L11* Lockhart Hall, University of Winnipeg, entrance on Ellice Ave. between Spence St. and Balmoral St. Parking is available on the surrounding streets and in the lots on nearby streets. Look for signage once you're at the building, or ask a security guard. ****************************************************************** For more information about MUUG, and its monthly meetings, check out their web server: https://muug.ca/ Help us promote this month's meeting, by putting this poster up on your workplace bulletin board or other suitable public message board: https://muug.ca/meetings/MUUGmeeting.pdf -- Manitoba UNIX User Group E-mail: <gedetil(a)muug.ca> c/o Gilbert E. Detillieux Web: http://muug.ca/ University of Manitoba Phone: (204)474-8161 Winnipeg MB CANADA R3T 2N2 Fax: (204)474-7609

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limited Linux Desktop?
by Grigory Shamov 06 Feb '17

06 Feb '17

Hi All, That is perhaps a naive question. I have never had much tho do with desktops. Now, we offer remote Linux desktop (Gnome mostly) to users with x2go. Is there a way to configure GNOME (or another) desktop somehow locked to the particular users and perhaps even particular apps? I.e., so that any Filemanager would stay under selected paths the user has access to? Access itself is not a problem, as it is controlled by UNIX groups, but just browsing say /home with a few thousand user directories gets slow and disk/CPU-intensive. (Or perhaps the way would be to auto mount users, but thats a rather big change for the rest of the system too) -- Grigory Shamov Westgrid/ComputeCanada Site Lead University of Manitoba E2-588 EITC Building, (204) 474-9625

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ls auto-quote rant
by Trevor Cordes 06 Feb '17

06 Feb '17

Paging Lennart... paging Lennart... he must be around here somewhere... Fedora 24 (and all cutting-edge distros) has a nice surprise: >touch filenospace >touch file\ with\ spaces >/bin/ls 'file with spaces' filenospace Huh? I don't recall putting single-quotes in the filename. http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/258679/why-is-ls-suddenly-wrapping-… Oh, so the genius "we know better than 45 years of *NIX" people strike again. "Why is this happening?" Several coreutils developers decided they knew better than decades of de facto standards. This change appears in coreutils 8.25-something. If you're running an older distro with 8.24, thank your lucky stars. Fix is... very systemd-esque ("it's your fault, you must do something to return to normalcy"): >/bin/ls -N file with spaces filenospace So update all your aliases folks, on every system, and re-source the alias file... assuming this would drive you as batty as it does me. Debian has reverted this change as they realized it was insanity. Fedora hasn't (I don't even see a bz for it). OpenSUSE already aliases to -N by default. The coreutils devs seem to think this bug is a good thing so as to make cutting & pasting consistent for noobs. Hmm, I'm not sure noobs are using the command line all that much, at least not enough to cause the old hands to go insane. And I'm still of the school that spaces don't belong in filenames unless absolutely necessary! What's your take? Any one for this change? /RANT

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"Let's Encrypt" by the Internet Security Research Group (ISRG)
by Hartmut W Sager 06 Feb '17

06 Feb '17

Does anyone here know anything about "Let's Encrypt" by the Internet Security Research Group (ISRG)? https://letsencrypt.org/ They don't seem to be part of the usual gang - FSF, GNU, GPL, Apache, Linux, etc., etc., yet they express similar philosophies. Who are they? How credible are they and their effort? And how does their effort compare to other free security certificates? A colleague of mine tipped me off onto this, and he especially is wondering. Hartmut W Sager - Tel +1-204-339-8331

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Re: [RndTbl] new ECC computer options (jd)
by jd 30 Jan '17

30 Jan '17

Not much on ECC from intel, is there? Brace yourself for Xeon pricing; e.g: octa-processor E7-8890-v3 (12-core) .. usd$ 7,174 ! For intel, a coupla notes: - Skylake CPUs (Lga1151) all gots VT-d (virtualisation optim) in 100series - Haswell is still around - may find bargains - Broadwell is mainstream - mature? - looks like it's back & forth (&back&forth) between (say..) Broadwell CPUs and Chips, until you find the pairing you want, THEN go looking for mbrds based on that chipset, AND which implement your features. - - - - With AMD .. waayyy easier. Survey FX/Am3+ mbrds, and then .. pick a Bulldozer. Dunno much about Opteronions. ECC is clearly documented as supported by CPUs, so just make sure mbrd implements that. ..and.. at these upper classes, is DualChannel assumed? Make sure mbrd offers it. Your workstation's data-width ('swath') to/from RAM "don't need no steenkin' zipper-merge" Many but not all CPUs come with HeatSink/Fan kit. TDP (Thermal Design Props) are all encouraging. AMD is 32nm tech, but still needs serious cooling. AMD supplies cooling kit on (only?) three of their mid-upper 'dozers. intel's modern CPUs are 22nm (and 14nm!squint!), but again, gotta be cooled right. Many models will push that pesky 3gHz 'barrier' I would like to bet you a beer you will find worthy candidate mbrds in uATX, and worthy boxen in that format, w/ adequate space, therein, to warm up your sandwiches. jd Oh.Yes: Parity was an extra 9th-bit chip, in DIP days. On write, the 9th-bit would be made to agree' with the byte's being odd or even. If a read cycle showed any dis-'agree'-ment, we'd be better off .. half the time. IBM had some purdy schmaart dudes. If they want to save us half our Time, we should be grateful. Parity survived into SIM (&SIP) "module'/'panel'days. Later in that SIM aeon, around the time of [Nibble+Nibble+Parity] SMT DIPs on each SIM, it became ..uhm.. expedient to install a simple logic trick-chip (instead of a real bitwise chip), to calc the SIM's parity on any read, and present that to the eager, expectant mbrd parity guts. On write, of course, it was still told what to remembory but .. what were we talking about? Oh, Yes. I think them was days of "fast page" and EDO and paying a bit more for 70ns MT, man, but not for 70ns EDO .. long story, man. We were incensed when SDRAM/sdimm came along and it don't got no parity, man. Mere parity was a laugh to VAXmen. man. Macs no likey (any kinda) parity sims, I learnt. Yet them fruity 8bit sims were always more shekels. Go figure. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 2017-01-29 12:00 PM, roundtable-request(a)muug.ca wrote: > Send Roundtable mailing list submissions to > roundtable(a)muug.ca > > To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit > https://muug.ca/mailman/listinfo/roundtable > or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to > roundtable-request(a)muug.ca > > You can reach the person managing the list at > roundtable-owner(a)muug.ca > > When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific > than "Re: Contents of Roundtable digest..." > > > Today's Topics: > > 1. Re: new ECC computer options (Trevor Cordes) > 2. Re: new ECC computer options (Trevor Cordes) > 3. Re: new ECC computer options (Kevin McGregor) > 4. Re: new ECC computer options (Hartmut W Sager) > > > _______________________________________________ > Roundtable mailing list > Roundtable(a)muug.ca > https://muug.ca/mailman/listinfo/roundtable

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Re: [RndTbl] new ECC computer options
by Brock Wolfe 28 Jan '17

28 Jan '17

I spent a considerable amount of time recently looking at Workstation grade setups to support a major 3D CAD package as well as support CGI rendering and transcoding. The major difference is whether you want to support multiple video cards X3 or X4 to support multi-GPU processing (ie.OpenCL). If not, then a mid-range board (ASUS etc.) that supports ECC (or not) processor is good enough. The more important question is how much money you want to put into the processor. If your workload to be mostly single threaded (CAD work), then a mainstream quad processor (with the highest clock speed) is the best. The motherboard can overclock dynamically to get the best performance. If your going to use software or application that can work mult-treaded (ie. rendering/transcoding) , then moving up to a server grade processor that supports 8+ cores (and the highest affordable clock speed) is going to make a REAL difference. When rendering a single CGI frame takes an hour and you need 300 frames for 10 seconds of video, the seconds/minutes saved add up quickly. Another approach is to see if your software supports (built-in) clustering capability. For example Blender can be configured to create (Master/Slave/Client) nodes that can create a rending cluster on to other available machines. The heavy lifting is off-loaded, saving your workstation to continue on content creation. On 1/28/2017 12:00 PM, roundtable-request(a)muug.ca wrote: > Message: 1 > Date: Sat, 28 Jan 2017 00:46:42 -0600 > From: Trevor Cordes<trevor(a)tecnopolis.ca> > To: MUUG RndTbl<roundtable(a)muug.ca> > Subject: [RndTbl] new ECC computer options > Message-ID:<20170128064642.GA5713(a)pog.tecnopolis.ca> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii > > I'm looking for input from anyone in the club who may be knowledgable, > eyeballing, or has purchased a "workstation" system recently with ECC > memory. (Note, ECC is imperative!) I don't need dual-socket, crazy > speed, just something like a mid-range modern i7 with modern RAM, slots, > etc. (i3 speeds won't cut it.) > > By "workstation" I mean it has to have at least one PCIe x16 (full 16 > electrical) slot so it can have a good video card installed (and handle > upgrades in the future). So some "servers" will qualify, although most do > not have a true x16 slot (they'll say x16 but the small print will say x8 > or x4 electrical), especially on the low end. I also need tower form > factor, as rackmount will (unless 4U) be a pain to fit cards in, etc. > Lastly, I really want a DIY setup where I buy the board, cpu, etc > individually, though if a perfect premade system (i.e. Lenovo) exists that > fits the bill I might consider it (must use no propreitary form factor > parts, including mobo & PS). > > It's basically impossible since the discontinuation of the Intel > D975 chipsets (nearly 10 years ago) to do Intel with ECC without buying a > Xeon CPU. So I'm probably stuck buying a Xeon CPU and getting slower than > i7 for double the price. Ugh. > > I'd really love to hear from the AMD nuts out there if there are any good > AMD options, especially ones that are more enthusiast/desktop oriented > rather than same-price-as-Xeon competitors. If I'm going to spend big > bucks, I'll buy Intel: AMD needs to offer a compelling price advantage to > pull me over. > > I still believe AMD could carve a niche for itself by offering desktop > enthusiast chips / mobos with ECC at desktop, rather than server, prices. > Maybe add $50 each to a mobo and cpu as the price premium. Not the 100% > premium Intel wants just to get ECC. (I miss the old days when getting > ECC was cheap/easy.) If AMD already has such a thing (I'm hoping!), > great! > > I know I'm not the only one in the club interested in these answers. P.S. > being a computer reseller, I don't need prices or store suggestions, I can > just buy it all wholesale:-) It's the "this chipset plus that CPU" that > I'm really looking for. > > Thanks! >

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MUUG http down last 3 hours
by Theodore Baschak 27 Jan '17

27 Jan '17

MUUG.ca http has been down for the last 3 hours or so (but the host is pingable) I notice the HTTP service has been down more and more lately as well, wondering if thats actually apache being down, or if its a lack of server threads able to handle client requests at that particular time? Theodore Baschak - AS395089 - Hextet Systems https://ciscodude.net/ - https://hextet.systems/ http://mbix.ca/

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weird mts latency issue?
by Trevor Cordes 22 Jan '17

22 Jan '17

Just now on a box I manage I'm seeing weird ping times on a DSL (home) connection. It's wreaking havoc with things. Has anyone seen a pattern like this before? on the dsl box out to another IP: : icmp_seq=1 ttl=56 time=3073 ms : icmp_seq=2 ttl=56 time=2112 ms : icmp_seq=3 ttl=56 time=1154 ms : icmp_seq=4 ttl=56 time=192 ms : icmp_seq=5 ttl=56 time=3578 ms : icmp_seq=6 ttl=56 time=2616 ms : icmp_seq=7 ttl=56 time=1658 ms : icmp_seq=8 ttl=56 time=694 ms : icmp_seq=9 ttl=56 time=4125 ms : icmp_seq=10 ttl=56 time=3170 ms : icmp_seq=11 ttl=56 time=2202 ms : icmp_seq=12 ttl=56 time=1240 ms : icmp_seq=13 ttl=56 time=289 ms It's bursty, the above is 3 bursts, where I start the ping, wait 3s and it spits out 4 replies together, then again... sometimes the time is up to 10kms. If I ping from my box to that box I get even more weirdness: icmp_seq=1 ttl=57 time=60.8 ms icmp_seq=2 ttl=57 time=60.0 ms icmp_seq=3 ttl=57 time=61.4 ms icmp_seq=4 ttl=57 time=70.4 ms icmp_seq=1 ttl=57 time=3612 ms (DUP!) icmp_seq=2 ttl=57 time=2649 ms (DUP!) icmp_seq=3 ttl=57 time=1692 ms (DUP!) icmp_seq=4 ttl=57 time=726 ms (DUP!) icmp_seq=5 ttl=57 time=63.4 ms icmp_seq=6 ttl=57 time=59.3 ms icmp_seq=7 ttl=57 time=62.4 ms icmp_seq=8 ttl=57 time=68.3 ms icmp_seq=9 ttl=57 time=61.4 ms icmp_seq=5 ttl=57 time=4366 ms (DUP!) icmp_seq=6 ttl=57 time=3403 ms (DUP!) icmp_seq=7 ttl=57 time=2443 ms (DUP!) icmp_seq=8 ttl=57 time=1488 ms (DUP!) icmp_seq=9 ttl=57 time=518 ms (DUP!) I don't think I've ever seen DSL behave that strangely...

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