May 2022 - main - earth.li

SSD HDD and simlinks?
by Phil Thane 01 Jun '22

01 Jun '22

After plaguing this list for months about my ailing desktop PC I finally skipped it and bought a (basic) new one. It comes with 128GB SSD. It's fast of course but not very big. So here's the plan but any advice would be good... I took the (almost new) 1TB drive out of the old PC and there's a lot of stuff on it. I've fitted it to the new machine but not installed anything yet as my ancient keyboard with a PS2 plug won't fit! Once that's sorted I'll install Mint. I *think* I'll do a standard install to the SSD and ignore the HDD. My user data on the HDD is mostly in /home/phil/Nextcloud and it was synced to my Nextcloud server. I assume, hope, I can keep that synced data on the HDD and just link the directory to my new /home/phil/... Not sure if that means using the link as the Nextcloud directory when setting up the client or maybe Nextcloud will allow me to connect direct to the HDD. Either way though I'm hoping to avoid taking all day to sync my data across the network. I remember long ago having a PC with 2 small HDD and setting it up with / on one but /home on the other. Is that still a thing? Is it worth doing in this case? Though bearing in mind it means formatting the HDD and re-syncing all the data. -- Phil

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Re: Comparing large folders of mostly identical file contents with different filenames (Mark Rogers)
by Peter 31 May '22

31 May '22

A query, not a suggestion, because you are all far, far better informed than me about this stuff! I was curious and looked up what tools are available for this, and came on: rdfind Fdupes dupGuru which all seem to find dupes by content. I am sure Mark is well aware of these and more. So why can't one of them be used to find the dupes? Also, is any of them significantly better than the others? Different but related issue, the app I have used to sync folders in the past is Unison, which I found very simple and effective. Also Grsync. Do people use these? Or is something else preferable? Peter On Sun, 22 May 2022 12:00:03 +0100 main-request(a)lists.alug.org.uk wrote: > Send main mailing list submissions to > main(a)lists.alug.org.uk > > To subscribe or unsubscribe via email, send a message with subject or > body 'help' to > main-request(a)lists.alug.org.uk > > You can reach the person managing the list at > main-owner(a)lists.alug.org.uk > > When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific > than "Re: Contents of main digest..."

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Sharing 2FA (TOTP)
by Mark Rogers 31 May '22

31 May '22

Are there any good ways of sharing 2 factor authentication credentials? Scenario: I have probably 20 accounts secured by 2FA using (currently) Authy to manage them. A colleague similarly has their own 2FA setup (not sure what they use). However there are some accounts we both need access to, and therefore at present we haven't enabled 2FA on. I want to set up 2FA in such a way that either of us can generate a code without sharing anything else to do it. I believe this is using TOTP protocol? I don't know enough about how it works but I can't see any technical reason why the shared secret can't be shared between multiple people (Authy already lets me share between multiple devices, but in an "all or nothing" way.) Obviously sharing 2FA credentials weakens security. But at present the alternative is not using it at all, and surely shared 2FA is better than that. -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0344 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) 21 Drakes Mews, Milton Keynes, MK8 0ER

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Comparing large folders of mostly identical file contents with different filenames
by Mark Rogers 23 May '22

23 May '22

I have a backup of a GMail account which creates folders by year, month, date and within them .eml files for each email. I'm migrating to a different GMail account so I'm moving the emails to the new account, and I have a backup also of the second account. So it's something like: Account1/2022/5/1/aaaa.eml and Account2/2022/5/1/bbbb.eml .. with each being identical emails (a diff of the two files will confirm that). Of course I don't just have 1 email. I have about 200,000, and the number of files in the two backups is slightly different so I want to find the discrepancies. So: Any suggestions? I could run a standard dedup program but that'll be very slow given that it'll be comparing 200k files with another 200k files. In most cases I suspect the missing file(s) will stand out just from their file sizes on a per-directory comparison. -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0344 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) 21 Drakes Mews, Milton Keynes, MK8 0ER

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RAM
by Phil Thane 17 May '22

17 May '22

Hi, Over the last few months I've posted a few enquiries about my steadily worsening PC. A few tweaks have sometimes improved things slightly for a while but long term it's getting worse. It's now very unstable given to hanging whenever asked to do anything like move/close a window, so hope I get to the end of this without a problem. I *think* there might be a problem with RAM and/or mainboard RAM slots. There are 2x4GB modules fitted. (Crucial Ballistix not cheapo stuff). UEFI setup and lshw both report 8GB but free only shows 4GB. That was the case under Mint, and still is with a fresh install of Kubuntu. Any suggestions before I lash out on new RAM? Because if I do it's pretty much guaranteed to be something else. Or do any of you have old DDR 3 you've replaced with bigger sticks and not got around to selling on Ebay? Cheap preferred but no reasonable price refused! If all else fails I guess a new MoBo/CPU/RAM bundle might be required... -- Phil

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Re: RAM
by Srdjan Todorovic 13 May '22

13 May '22

On Fri, 13 May 2022 at 19:59, Phil Thane <phil(a)pthane.co.uk> wrote: > > Memtest isn't installed and isn't available from Ubuntu repositories. > probably could get it from elsewhere but chances are I just crash/hang > the thing again! Memtest is supposed to be booted off a usb drive or a cd. You can get it from https://www.memtest.org/archives and get version 5.31, follow the instructions to write that to a bootable media and then test the ram. Secondary computer you could use? > Kubuntu system monitor shows 4GB but no error messages, and trying to > run it just hung the PC again so doing this from a different machine. Nothing in the kernel logs? dmesg? No exotic PCI cards in the system or other experimental drivers loaded? > uname -a shows kernel version 5.15.x.x and AMD X86-64 > > Can't see anything in UEFI to suggest setting problem. It shows 8GB > installed and 8GB available. Suggests your linux install is messed up? Can you reinstall or re-download the ISO again, verify that the ISO is not corrupted and burn another install disk and try re-installing? > On 13/05/2022 19:41, Srdjan Todorovic wrote: > > On Fri, 13 May 2022 at 19:30, Phil Thane <phil(a)pthane.co.uk> wrote: > > > >> It's now very unstable given to hanging whenever asked to do anything > >> like move/close a window, so hope I get to the end of this without a > >> problem. > > What does Memtest86 say about your ram? This should be the very first > > thing you do. > > > >> I *think* there might be a problem with RAM and/or mainboard RAM slots. > >> There are 2x4GB modules fitted. (Crucial Ballistix not cheapo stuff). > >> UEFI setup and lshw both report 8GB but free only shows 4GB. That was > >> the case under Mint, and still is with a fresh install of Kubuntu. > > Which version of Kubuntu? > > What kernel version and architecture? uname -a > > > > Are you sure your kernel is not 32bit without PAE extensions? That > > would limit to 4GB usable RAM even if you had more. > > Any weird BIOS / UEFI settings that might put it into some sort of > > legacy mode to only give you 4GB? > > > >> Any suggestions before I lash out on new RAM? Because if I do it's > >> pretty much guaranteed to be something else. Or do any of you have old > >> DDR 3 you've replaced with bigger sticks and not got around to selling > >> on Ebay? Cheap preferred but no reasonable price refused! > > I have 2 sticks of 4GB each, DDR3 ECC server ram - not sure if it > > would work (you would need to check if your CPU + motherboard could > > support it), but might be open to taking £10 or something + postage? I > > would need to do Memtest86 on that ram to make sure it's ok. > > > > Thanks, > > Srdjan

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